CHAPTER 8

Issues relating to the BBC arising
from Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on the BBC Today programme on 29
May 2003

260. These issues are the following:

(1) Was there a failure by the BBC to exercise proper
editorial control over Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on the Today programme
on 29 May?

(2) Was the BBC management at fault in failing to
investigate properly and adequately the Government's complaints
that the report was false that the Government probably knew that
the 45 minutes claim was wrong even before it decided to put it
in the dossier?

(3) Was there a failure by BBC management to inform
the Governors of the BBC of the extent of editorial concerns about
Mr Gilligan's broadcasts in relation to the 45 minutes claim?

(4) Whilst the Governors were under a duty to protect
the independence of the BBC from Government interference, were
the Governors at fault in failing to investigate properly and
adequately the Government's complaints about the report on the
Today programme in relation to the 45 minutes claim, and were
the Governors too ready to accept the opinion of BBC management
that the broadcasts were proper ones for the Today programme to
make.

261. Before considering these issues it
is relevant to set out in greater detail what occurred during
and after Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on 29 May.

262. The Government strongly denied the
truth of the allegations reported by Mr Gilligan in the Today
programme and the 10 Downing Street duty press officer who heard
the broadcast at 6.07am, having spoken to the Prime Minister's
press officer travelling with him in the Middle East and having
spoken also to Mr John Scarlett, issued a denial of the allegations
at 7.15am, the denial stating:

These allegations are untrue, not one word of
the dossier was not entirely the work of the intelligence agencies.
The suggestion that any pressure was put on the intelligence services
by Number Ten or anyone else to change the document are (sic)
entirely false.

This denial was reported by Mr John Humphreys on
the Today programme in the broadcast beginning at 7.32am when,
speaking to Mr Gilligan he said:

Now you told us about this earlier on the programme
Andy, and we've had a statement from 10 Downing Street that says
it's not true, and let me just quote what they said to you. 'Not
one word of the dossier was not entirely the work of the intelligence
agencies'. Sorry to submit you to this sort of English but there
we are. I think we know what they mean. Are you suggesting, let's
be very clear about this, that it was not the work of the Intelligence
Agencies.

AG: No, the information which I am told was dubious
did come from the agencies, but they were unhappy about it, because
they didn't think it should have been in there. They thought it
was, it was not corroborated sufficiently, and they actually thought
it was wrong, they thought the informant concerned erm, had got
it wrong, they thought he'd misunderstood what was happening.

263. Later on 29 May an official in the
Prime Minister's press office wrote to the BBC stating that Mr
Gilligan's broadcast on the Today programme had made serious and
untrue allegations about 10 Downing Street over the presentation
of the dossier.

264. On 25 June Mr Campbell gave evidence
to the FAC. In the course of his evidence he asserted in strong
terms and on a number of occasions that the report broadcast by
the BBC on 29 May was untruthful and that it was a lie that he
(Mr Campbell) or the Prime Minister or 10 Downing Street overrode
the judgment of the intelligence agencies to insert intelligence
in the September 2002 dossier which was exaggerated or with which
the intelligence agencies were not 100 per cent content. Part
of his evidence was as follows:

Q986 Richard Ottaway: The second main
conclusion that is being queried is the 45-minute point, which
you have dealt with quite extensively in your memorandum. The
Foreign Secretary made a similar point yesterday about the 45
minutes. Are you saying the same today that this is what the intelligence
people are telling you and it must be true?

Mr Campbell: When the first draft of the
September 2002 dossier was presented to Number 10, I think I am
right in saying that was the first time I had seen that and again,
as I say, having seen the meticulousness and the care that the
Chairman of the JIC and his colleagues were taking in the whole
process, I really did not think it was my place, to be perfectly
frank, to say, "Hold on a minute, what is this about?"
What is completely and totally and 100 per cent untrue - and this
is the BBC allegation, which is ostensibly I think why the Chairman
called me on this - what is completely and totally untrue is that
I in any way overrode that judgment, sought to exaggerate that
intelligence, or sought to use it in any way that the intelligence
agencies were not 100 per cent content with.

Q987 Richard Ottaway: You use some rather
interesting wording in your memorandum that to suggest it was
inserted against the wishes of the intelligence agencies was false.
Was it put in at your suggestion?

Mr Campbell: No, otherwise - It existed
in the very first draft and, as far as I am aware, that part the
paper stayed like that.

Q988 Richard Ottaway: Have you gone back
to the JIC on that point since publication?

Mr Campbell: I can assure you that I have
had many, many discussions about this issue with the Chairman
of the JIC, not least in preparation for this hearing.

Q989 Richard Ottaway: And they are still
standing behind it?

Mr Campbell: Absolutely, absolutely. In
relation to that particular story, which as Sir John Stanley said
to the BBC correspondent last week, is about as serious an allegation
as one can make, not just against me but against the Prime Minister
and the intelligence agencies, they are basically saying that
the Prime Minister took the country into military conflict and
all that entails - loss of military and Iraqi civilian life -
on the basis of a lie. Now that is a very, very serious allegation.

Q990 Richard Ottaway: Can I suggest it
is Parliament that took the country into war.

Mr Campbell: The allegation against me
is that we helped the Prime Minister persuade Parliament and the
country to go into conflict on the basis of a lie. I think that
is a pretty serious allegation. It has been denied by the Prime
Minister, it has been denied by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee, it has been denied by the Security and Intelligence
Co-ordinator and it has been denied by the heads of the intelligence
agencies involved, and yet the BBC continue to stand by that story.

Q991 Richard Ottaway: You believe that
time will prove you right on that one?

Mr Campbell: I know that we are right
in relation to that 45-minute point. It is completely and totally
untrue, and I do not use this word -

Q992 Richard Ottaway: I am talking about
the substance.

Mr Campbell: It is actually a lie

..........

Q1007 Mr Pope: Thank you, Chairman. Mr
Campbell, the charges against you really are of the gravest nature:
that you exaggerated the evidence to persuade a reluctant Parliament
to vote for a war which was not popular. We heard in evidence
from Mr Gilligan of the BBC last week and he alleged that you
transformed the original September dossier, and if I can just
quote what he said in evidence, my "source's claim was that
the dossier had been transformed in the week before it was published
and I asked " - that is Gilligan - "'So how did this
transformation happen?', and the answer was a single word, which
was 'Campbell'". That is an incredibly damaging allegation.
Could you comment on its veracity?

Mr Campbell: As I explained earlier, the
story that I "sexed-up" the dossier is untrue: the story
that I "put pressure on the intelligence agencies" is
untrue: the story that we somehow made more of the 45 minute command
and control point than the intelligence agencies thought was suitable
is untrue: and what is even more extraordinary about this whole
episode is that, within an hour of the story first being broadcast,
it was denied, emphatically: it then continued. We were in Kuwait
at the time - the Prime Minister was about to get a helicopter
to Basra - it was denied: the story kept being repeated: the following
day the BBC returned to it and it was denied - by now we were
in Poland and I remember being called out of a breakfast with
the Prime Minister and the Polish Prime Minister because I had
asked to speak to John Scarlett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee, just to absolutely double/triple check that there was
nothing in this idea that the intelligence agencies were somehow
unhappy with the way that we behaved during the thing and that
there was no truth at all that anybody at the political level
put pressure on the 45 minute point and John said, "Absolutely.
It is complete and total nonsense and you can say that with my
authority". Then the Prime Minister had to come out of the
breakfast with the Polish Prime Minister; he was about to do a
press conference about the Polish EU referendum campaign and,
of course, the British media are all asking about this lie, which
is what it was.

Q1008 Mr Pope: On the 45 minutes, what
you have refuted up until now is the allegation that you inserted
the 45 minute claim into the dossier and I am trying to make a
different point which is that there is an allegation not that
you inserted it but you gave it undue prominence; that this was
a background piece of information; it was based on a single piece
of uncorroborated intelligence advice and yet it was given undue
prominence. It is mentioned in the foreword by the Prime Minister
and it is mentioned three other times throughout the document
and it is a chilling allegation - that our troops in Cyprus or
our troops perhaps if they went into Iraq could face a 45 minute
threat of the deployment of a chemical attack?

Mr Campbell: Well, it is true that when
the BBC representative came to the Committee last week he claimed
that all he had ever alleged was that we had "given it undue
prominence". I am afraid that is not true. What he said last
week was not true. It was a complete backtrack on what he had
broadcast and written about in theMail on Sunday, The
Spectator and elsewhere. Now the reason why I feel so strongly
that we, the government, from the Prime Minister down deserve
an apology about this story is it has been made absolutely clear
not just by me - you can put me to one side and I am well aware
of the fact that I am defined in a certain way by large parts
of the media, but when you put in the Prime Minister, the Foreign
Secretary, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the
Head of the Secret Intelligence Service, the Government Security
and Intelligence Co-ordinator all saying emphatically "This
story is not true" and the BBC defence correspondent on the
basis of a single anonymous source continues to say that it is
true, then I think something has gone very wrong with BBC journalism.

Q1009 Mr Pope: Are you saying that he
lied not just to the Committee but on the radio? I have the transcript
of the Today programme of 4 June. He said, "The reason why
this story has run so as long" - and this is a direct quote
- "is nobody has actually ever denied the central charge
made by my source".

Mr Campbell: The denial was made within
an hour of the lie being told on the radio. Now, I am not suggesting
that he has not had somebody possibly say something to him but
whatever he has been told is not true, and I think in relation
to the briefing paper, when that mistake was discovered, we put
our hands up and said "There is a mistake here" and
we found out where it happened and we dealt with it, and I would
compare and contrast with an organisation which has broadcast
something - not just once but hundreds of times since - that is
a lie.

..........

Q1101 Mr Maples: What I put to
you is that what will probably happen is that it is perfectly
possible you, and Andrew Gilligan, actually told the truth and
what happened here was that everybody slightly exaggerated their
position.

Mr Campbell: I did not. I did not have
a position. This is the Joint Intelligence Committee. Andrew Gilligan's
allegations were about the Joint Intelligence Committee paper,
not the other one.

Q1102 Mr Maples: He said that you sought
to change it -

Mr Campbell: No, he said, I sexed it up
and I made changes against the wishes of the agencies. That is
a lie.

Q1103 Mr Maples: I am suggesting to you
it is possible that you sought changes to this document which
did not involve countermanding intelligence. After all, your craft
is presentation, that is what you are extremely good at, and it
would be almost unbelievable if you did not have some input into
how this document was presented.

Mr Campbell: As I have said many times
before, there is a legitimate place in the political process for
dealing with issues of presentation and communication now we have
a 24-hour media, round the world, round the clock. He did not
say that. He said that I abused British Intelligence. He went
further and said it was done against the wishes of the intelligence
agencies; not true. I think that is a pretty serious allegation
which is why I am very, very grateful for the opportunity to rebut
it.

265. In his evidence to the FAC Mr Campbell
also attacked the BBC by alleging that there was an anti-war agenda
in large parts of the BBC.

Q1104 Mr Maples: The same allegation has
apparently been made - I do not know whether you have seen it
- in yesterday'sNew York Times. It says, 'A top
State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told
Congressional Committees in closed oral hearings last week that
he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters
to conform with the Bush Administration's views', several Congressional
officials said today. You may say, "Here is some rogue agent
in the State Department saying this to a rogue journalist",
but it is interesting, is it not, how this allegation crops up
here and now it has cropped up in Washington as well.

Mr Campbell: Can I explain why I think
the allegation crops up. Again, I think this goes to the heart
of the way some of these issues are covered by the media. I do
not think we should make any bones about this. There are large
parts of the media which have an agenda on the issue of Iraq.
For most of those parts of the media their agenda is open, it
is avowed. If you bought theDaily Mirror in the
run-up to the conflict, you knew that paper was against our position.
If you bought The Sun, you knew that paper was passionately
supportive of our position on dealing with Saddam. I would identify
three stages in this. In the run-up to conflict there was an agenda
in large parts of the BBC - and I think the BBC is different from
the rest of the media and should be viewed as different from the
rest of the media because it is a different organisation in terms
of its reputation, in terms of its global reach and all the rest
of it - and there was a disproportionate focus upon, if you like,
the dissent, the opposition, to our position. I think that in
the conflict itself the prism that many were creating within the
BBC was, one, it is all going wrong, and I can give you an example
-

Q1105 Mr Maples: Well, I think probably
many of us would agree with that.

Mr Campbell: And now what is happening now, the third,
the conflict not having led to the Middle East going up in flames,
not having led to us getting bogged down for months and months
and months, these same people now have to find a different rationale.
Their rationale is that the Prime Minister led the country into
war on a false basis, that is what this is about.

266. On 26 June Mr Campbell wrote to Mr
Greg Dyke, the Director General of the BBC and to Mr Sambrook,
the Director of News at the BBC about Mr Gilligan's broadcasts
on 29 May. Mr Sambrook replied to Mr Campbell on 27 June and on
27 June, after receiving Mr Sambrook's reply, Mr Campbell issued
a statement to the press. The correspondence between the Government
and the BBC from 29 May to 27 June, together with Mr Campbell's
press statement of 27 June is set out at appendix 14.

267. On 27 June at 7.10pm Mr Campbell appeared
on the Channel 4 television news programme when he took part in
a heated interview with Mr Jon Snow, the presenter of the programme.
The interview commenced as follows:

Jon Snow: Well now we are joined by Alastair
Campbell, a rare moment, thank you for, for coming in. This row
between you and the BBC, I mean, many will see it as a diversionary
tactic to prevent people actually seeing the real issue here which
is that MPs are not getting to the root of whether in fact the
intelligence we were provided with was the real intelligence provided
by the intelligence services.

Alastair Campbell: Well if people wish
to see it as a diversionary tactic they may. The media are constantly
telling people never to take things at face value. This isn't
a row between me and the BBC this is an attempt by the Government
to get the BBC to admit that a fundamental attack upon the integrity
of the Government, the Prime Minister, the intelligence agencies,
let alone people, the, sort of, evil spin doctors in the dark
who do their dirty works in the minds of a lot of journalists,
let them just accept for once they have got it wrong. The allegation,
let's just understand what this allegation amounted to, and these
weasel words in Richard Sambrook's letters, letter today (indistinct)
says to me we didn't make the allegation we reported a source
making the allegation. What does that say about journalism? You've
been a journalism for decades, I was a journalist for quite a
long time, I respect a huge number of journalists including many
at the BBC

JS: But I have to say

AC: but they're now saying I,
you can say anything you want on the television because somebody
said it to you, doesn't matter if it's true

JS: the BBC's riposte to you is
very reasoned. It is set in the context of all the other information
which was in the public domain, it's entirely consistent with
that information. It credits the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent,
the Times, I mean, most of Fleet Street had similar accounts of
what intelligence sources were telling them. The BBC doesn't seem
to be out of step with anybody else.

AC: The BBC in their letter to me, and
it's fascinating, they have post facto justification of a story
by citing sources in newspapers which wrote stories subsequent
to their, to the story that they had done. Some of those stories
I know for a fact are incorrect. One of them, there's no point
going through all the detail I think the public are probably bored
rigid with this already, one of those stories I know for a fact
is wrong and I've addressed in evidence to the select committee.

JS: I think the public is more likely
to be concerned at the extraordinarily intemperate language which
is coming out on behalf of the Prime Minister in your name. 'The
story was a lie, it is a lie

AC: Correct.

The full transcript of the interview is set out in
appendix 15.

268. On 29 June Mr Campbell wrote to Mr
Sambrook. In addition to the correspondence between Mr Campbell
and Mr Sambrook correspondence took place between Mr Ben Bradshaw
MP, who wrote on behalf of the Government, Mr Hoon and the BBC
from 28 June until 10 July in relation to Mr Gilligan's broadcasts
on the Today programme on 29 May. This correspondence is set out
in appendix 16.

269. On 1 July Mr Gavyn Davies sent the
following e-mail to the Governors of the BBC:

I am sure we have all had a trying weekend, reading
the press and listening to broadcasts on the Campbell/BBC row.
The press commentary over the weekend has not been uniformly good
for the BBC position, but it has certainly been very bad from
the government point of view, as was the opinion poll data in
the News of the World today. My hunch is that the government would
now like the row to go away, and this has been reinforced by the
fact that Alastair Campbell has said that he will return to "business
as usual", at least until he sees the report of the Foreign
Affairs Committee on Monday week. It is clear that some Labour
MPs feel that Campbell did himself and the government damage by
his performance on Channel 4 news on Friday, and they now want
to calm things down.

Having said that, I think it is unknowable whether
the FAC will rule in the BBC's favour on the 45 minute claim in
the September dossier. They might do so, but it is also possible
that they will say that the truth is confused, since early drafts
within the intelligence community did not include the 45 minute
claim, while later ones did. Or they may conceivably just conclude
that the first draft which was seen by Mr Campbell did indeed
include the 45 minute claim, as he has always argued. This latter
form of judgment would be problematic, especially if Campbell
then files a formal complaint which goes for adjudication either
to the Governors or the BSC.

Some may therefore argue that there could be
advantage for the BBC in reaching a settlement with No 10 which
both sides can live with, perhaps in advance of, or shortly after,
the publication of the FAC report. However, I remain firmly of
the view that, in a big picture sense, it is absolutely critical
for the BBC to emerge from this row without being seen to buckle
in the face of government pressure. If the BBC allows itself to
be bullied by this sort of behaviour from No 10, I believe that
this could fatally damage the trust which the public places in
us. Furthermore, I think we should remember that the main historic
role of the Governors has been to shield the BBC from this sort
of attempt to exert political muscle over our news output. This,
it seems to me, really is a moment for the Governors to stand
up and be counted. So, I hope you will agree that, whatever emerges
about the precise details of the 45 minute claim, we must not
give any ground which threatens the fundamental independence of
our news output, or suggests that the Governors have buckled to
government pressure.

My last thought is this. It may never be definitively
proven whether the details of the claim made by Andrew Gilligan's
source were 100% accurate or not. And of course I recognise that
the Producers' Guidelines must been seen to be upheld. But I do
not believe that the BBC has lied to the public, or that it has
accused the Prime Minister of lying, or that it has been wrong
to place a great deal of scrutiny on the validity of the government's
intelligence dossiers. Such have been the proven failings in these
dossiers, I wonder whether the Today programme could conceivably
have suppressed the Gilligan story, coming as it did from a credible
and senior source. Would suppression of the views of such an important
source have been a valid thing to do in such circumstances?

I put this only as a question, not least because
we may have to adjudicate on the matter at a later date. But I
feel very comfortable that the BBC did not knowingly mislead the
public; and equally comfortable that our news department was pursuing
a matter which it was wholly in the public interest to pursue.

Please either ring me or send me a quick e-mail
if you would like to register any views. I feel in need of some
guidance about your broad feelings, without of course wishing
to hold anyone to a definitive position in advance of any subsequent
judgments we may need to make.

270. On 4 July Mr Gavyn Davies called a
special meeting of the Governors of the BBC for 6.30pm on Sunday
6 July and sent them the following e-mail:

As you know I have decided to call a Governors'
meeting for 6.30pm on Sunday 6th July in Room 2364, Broadcasting
House to discuss the Campbell affair. I do not think that we can
wait until the next monthly Governors' meeting to discuss this
subject, especially in view of the fact that the publication of
the Annual Report will precede the July Governors' meeting, and
we need an agreed line to take in public before then.

This is an unusually important moment in our
careers as Governors. I am pleased that you have all made yourselves
available for this meeting - two of you by phone. We shall be
joined by Greg, Richard Sambrook, Caroline Thomson and Stephen
Whittle. Sally Osman, Head of Communications, will also be available
once we are in a position to agree a statement and to discuss
communications. Simon has compiled a pack of background papers
which will be issued to you later today.

I do not think that we should seek to take a
view during this meeting on whether the Gilligan story was accurate.
This is not a question on which we need to take responsibility.
Instead, I think we should concentrate on the following three
questions:

1. Mr Campbell has made allegations of systemic
bias in the BBC's coverage of the war. Should we reiterate our
already-published view that these criticisms are invalid, and
are therefore rejected by the Board?

2. Mr Campbell has also alleged that the Today
programme breached the BBC's producers' guidelines. I believe
that we should investigate this allegation, which has been repeatedly
made in public, without waiting for an official complaint from
Mr Campbell. We can do this on Sunday. We need to consider whether
to publish our verdict following the meeting.

3. We should also consider whether to initiate
investigations into any other matters of concern. These could
include: the rules under which BBC journalists are allowed to
publish newspaper articles under their names; the nature of the
producers' guidelines on the use of single-source, and anonymous-source
material; and the training of BBC journalists, especially in matters
relating to regulation, accuracy and impartiality. If we do decide
to initiate any such investigations, we may or may not wish to
publish that decision now.

I am aware that the Foreign Affairs Committee
will be reporting on Monday morning, but I do not think we need
to wait for that report, since I hope that we are not going to
try to give a verdict of our own on the accuracy of the Gilligan
story. In addition, I think that the BBC may be under pressure
on Monday, and I think that the Governors should be visible during
this time. Whatever we decide at our meeting, we should not be
absent from the debate next week.

I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.

With best wishes

271. Prior to the special meeting of the
Governors of the BBC on the evening of 6 July Mr Campbell wrote
on the 5 July to Mr Gavyn Davies and to all the other Governors
the following letter:

In advance of your meeting to discuss the allegations
that were made against the Government on the Today programme on
May 29, and subsequent events, I thought it would be helpful to
send you the enclosed.

It sets out, as fully as possible, how the Government
has sought to deal with this issue since the allegations were
first broadcast. I have included all the correspondence between
myself and the BBC, and between colleagues in Government and the
BBC. You will see from this that these serious allegations were
not put to us in advance. You will see the swift denial, made
with the backing of the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee,
which had little or no effect upon subsequent reporting. You will
see also that we did strive to resolve this privately. You will
also see, from the exchanges the BBC has had both in correspondence
and on air with Geoff Hoon and Ben Bradshaw, that we strongly
dispute the BBC claims that the allegations were put to us before
broadcast.

I am assuming that you will have been provided
with all the relevant transcripts of evidence through the Foreign
Affairs Committee. You will find in this file documentation referred
to in the paragraph above and a transcript of the Thursday May
29 broadcast. I have also attached the text of Mr Gilligan's Mail
on Sunday article of Sunday 1 June.

I am sorry to have sent you so much material,
but I think it important, particularly in light of the way recent
BBC reporting following Mr Gilligan's evidence to the FAC has
sought to redefine the allegations, that you have all this material
to hand.

I note from press cuttings that the BBC views
my complaint as an attack upon the independence of the BBC. I
want to assure you that is not the case. I respect the BBC's independence.
I believe the BBC is one of the country's greatest assets and
I have long been an admirer of its ethos, much of its journalism
and many of its journalists.

It is also being said that I intend to use this
issue as the basis of a broader attack upon the BBC. Let me assure
you that whatever concerns we have expressed about coverage of
Iraq, or about what we see as the agenda-driven journalism of
some journalists and some parts of the BBC, they are not the issue
here.

At issue here is one specific set of allegations,
profoundly damaging to the Prime Minister, the Government and
our Intelligence Agencies, which we know to be false and which
we have sought, first privately and then publicly, to have corrected.
It is about one story, the procedures that were or were not followed,
pre and post broadcast, and the difficulties we have had in seeking
redress for the broadcast of such a serious and false allegation,
which has since been repeated, because of the BBC's reach and
deserved reputation, in hundreds of media outlets in dozens of
countries around the world - some examples of which are attached.

I hope this is helpful. I do not intend to inform
the press that we have sent this to you.

272. The Governors met on the evening of
6 July and the minutes of the meeting were as follows:

BOARD OF GOVERNORS

MINUTES OF AN EXTRAORDINARY MEETING

HELD IN PRVIATE SESSION

Sunday 6 July 2003, 6.30pm to 8.50pm

in Room 2364 Broadcasting House

PRESENT:

Gavyn Davies - Chairman

Richard Ryder - Vice-Chairman

Ruth Deech

Dermot Gleeson

Sarah Hogg (by phone)

Merfyn Jones

Fabian Monds

Pauline Neville-Jones

Angela Sarkis

Robert Smith (by phone)

Ranjit Sondhi

Simon Milner - The Secretary

Tina Stowell - Head of Business Administration

APOLOGIES

There were no apologies.

Gavyn Davies opened this Extraordinary Meeting
of the Board by thanking Governors for attending on a Sunday evening.
He noted that no member of management, including the Director-General,
was present.

1. OVERVIEW AND CONTEXT

Gavyn Davies outlined the background to the meeting.
The BBC had been criticised by Alastair Campbell, some members
of the Government - and that morning by the Prime Minister in
a newspaper interview - for reporting an allegation made by an
intelligence source that the September 2002 Intelligence Dossier
had been "sexed-up" to strengthen the Government's case
for war in Iraq.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the House
of Commons (FAC) had conducted an inquiry into the Government's
case for war in Iraq and - amongst other witnesses - Andrew Gilligan,
the BBC's Defence Correspondent had given evidence about his report
of 29 May 2003 on Radio 4's Today covering an Intelligence
source's allegation that "45 mins to deploy weapons of mass
destruction" had been inserted into an Intelligence Report
against the wishes of the Intelligence Services. Alastair Campbell
had rejected this story in the strongest terms, calling on the
BBC to apologise for making untrue allegations against him, the
Prime Minister and the Government in general. Since then the row
between the BBC and Alastair Campbell had escalated, with Mr Campbell
criticising the BBC's coverage of the war more generally as biased
against the Government. The following morning, the FAC was scheduled
to publish its conclusions.

Gavyn Davies said that, following notification
to Governors on Friday 4 July the meeting had become public. Therefore,
a public statement following the meeting on conclusions reached
was expected. He believed this was right, as any attempt not to
provide a statement would be interpreted as the Governors being
indecisive and perhaps in disagreement with management. That said,
the Board was operating independently of management and it was
possible to demonstrate this without any sign that Governors were
'caving in' to either BBC management or the Government.

Prior to the meeting, the Secretary had circulated
to Governors:

The transcript of the relevant sections of Today
on 29 May 2003

Andrew Gilligan's Mail on Sunday article
of 1 June 2003

The Official Report of Andrew Gilligan's evidence
to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of 19 June

The Official Report of Alastair Campbell's evidence
to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of 25 June

Alastair Campbell's letter of 26 June to Richard
Sambrook (released to the media)

Richard Sambrook's reply of 27 June (released
to the media)

An open letter from Alastair Campbell of 29 June
in response

Richard Sambrook's letter to the Chairman of
the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of 30 June (not published)

A further letter from Richard Sambrook to the
Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee of 4 July (not
published).

In addition, Alastair Campbell had written personally
to each Governor on Saturday 5 July under cover of similar material,
plus copies of private correspondence between him and other Government
representatives and Ministers with Richard Sambrook and other
BBC News senior managers.

Gavyn Davies asked the Board to consider the
following issues before management were invited to join the meeting
and be questioned by Governors:

The BBC's coverage of the war in Iraq in general
terms. Gavyn Davies did not believe the Board should reopen this
issue as it had stated publicly twice before that it considered
the BBC's coverage to be impartial. Furthermore, evidence existed
through public opinion polls and a study by Cardiff University
that the BBC's coverage was not perceived to be biased. If Governors
remained convinced of their previously published view, should
they repeat it?

Had Andrew Gilligan's report on Today
breached the BBC's Producers' Guidelines? And in particular, was
the BBC wrong not to inform Number 10 of the story in advance
of broadcast?

Should Governors comment on the Prime Minister's
comments about the BBC's story being an attack on his personal
integrity? Gavyn Davies hoped it would be possible to include
something in the statement that would set the record straight
and provide an olive branch in this respect.

Whether an investigation into any other matters
of concern should be instigated. For example, the rules under
which BBC journalists were allowed to publish newspaper articles;
the nature of the Producers' Guidelines on the use of single-source
and anonymous-source material; and the training of BBC journalists,
especially in matters relating to regulation, accuracy and impartiality.

Gavyn Davies confirmed that the Board's public
statement would not necessarily comment on all issues discussed
at the meeting. During discussion, the following points were made:

a. Coverage of the War in Iraq

Most Governors did not support reopening their
assessment the BBC's coverage of war in Iraq, remaining convinced
that it was impartial.

There was a suggestion that Governors should
not offer immediate support to the management, however. Although
there was no reason to doubt the BBC's coverage of the war, the
Board could request the Director-General to undertake a review
with external experts. This would demonstrate that the BBC was
not arrogant and avoid accusations of a whitewash by the Governors;
providing an opportunity to raise questions with management in
light of the review's conclusions. Indeed, the report by Cardiff
University into broadcast coverage of the war only served to reassure
the BBC that an external review was not something to worry about.

Gavyn Davies noted the intention of such a review
was to verify Governors' judgment, rather than reopen the debate.
But the majority of the Board did not support this proposal. However,
in line with the new arrangements for monitoring impartiality,
the Board could, for example, request that coverage of the war
in Iraq be the next subject for external review by experts when
the next quarterly report on impartiality came forward to the
Board in October. However, this should not be referred to publicly
at this time.

b. Producers' Guidelines

It was clear that the Board was being asked to
consider whether it was right to broadcast the allegation as an
allegation and not decide whether that allegation was true.

Governors' initial view was that the Producers'
Guidelines on single sources were clear and there was sufficient
evidence that due consideration had been applied before the report
was broadcast.

Some Governors were less sure about whether the
BBC had acted in line with the Guidelines in relation to consulting
Number 10 prior to and following broadcast of the story. Indeed,
there was a view that the BBC had been na-­ve to broadcast
this allegation without expecting a powerful reaction and therefore
should have been more careful in his consultations with Government.

On the Guidelines more generally, the Board might
consider commenting publicly that these were being re-examined
in light of this episode, not least because the Intelligence Services
now operated in a more open fashion. Also, there had been management
activity since the broadcast that required examination. For example,
careful language had not been applied by Andrew Gilligan throughout.

Gavyn Davies was absolutely firm that the Board
should not seek to widen the debate to the Producer Guidelines
more generally. The Board was being asked at this meeting to determine
whether the Guidelines as currently published had been upheld.
Alastair Campbell had criticised the BBC's coverage of the war
and this must be refuted. Likewise, if the Board agreed, it should
make clear why it believed the BBC was right to broadcast Andrew
Gilligan's report. He noted that the Governors' Programme Complaints
Committee was a vehicle for handling complaints of this nature,
but it was perfectly proper and in the public interest for the
Board as a whole to consider this matter. In any case, a formal
complaint had not been received about the Andrew Gilligan report.

If there was a convincing argument that the BBC
should back down from its confrontation with the Government then
it should do so. However, there was none, so Governors should
support the BBC's journalists unless it was felt that proper procedures
had not been followed.

The Board's discussion should be considered in
the context of what the FAC's report might conclude. It would
probably criticise the Government about the February "dodgy
dossier" and to some extent also the September dossier. But
it was likely also to criticise the BBC for its reporting thereof.

c. Newspaper articles by BBC journalists

There was some support for commenting more generally
on proposals to tighten the guidelines in relation to BBC journalists
writing newspaper articles and creating, rather than reporting
the news.

Summarising this part of the discussion, Gavyn
Davies said the Board remained of the view that the BBC's coverage
of war in Iraq was impartial. Most Governors were somewhat concerned
about Today's contacts with Number 10 and the need to establish
if proper procedures had been followed. On the other hand, some
were not convinced that Today was required to contact Number
10. There was a lack of clarity on whether this was appropriate
or not.

The Board of Governors was then joined by the
following:

Greg Dyke Director- General

Richard Sambrook Director, News

Caroline Thomson Director, Policy & Legal

Mark Damazer Deputy Director, News

Stephen Whittle Controller, Editorial Policy

Gavyn Davies welcomed the senior managers and said that the mood amongst Governors was supportive and the Board had agreed there was no need to reopen the question of whether the BBC's reporting of the war in Iraq was biased. Governors wished to ask management questions about the following issues relating to or arising from the Andrew Gilligan report on the Today Programme:

If the Producers' Guidelines were upheld

If sufficient warning was given to Number 10
in advance of the broadcast

What opportunities were available to the Government
to deny the story

If the rules relating to BBC journalists writing
newspaper articles should be re-examined

2.PRODUCERS' GUIDELINES

Richard Sambrook said the Guidelines related
to three issues in this case:

Anonymity: where he believed no action taken
demonstrated non-compliance.

Single-sourcing: where the Guidelines requested
"reluctance". The context of management's decision to
go ahead with the story based on a single source was made clear
in Richard Sambrook's open letter to Alastair Campbell.

Fairness: whether sufficient warning was provided
to Government about the story and if due prominence was afforded
to their denials.

On the latter, there was a separate story running
on Today on 29 May about cluster bombs and the editorial
team had asked Adam Ingrams' office (a Defence Minister) if his
interview could be extended to include weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) at around 5.30pm the previous day. Whilst the programme
team had been clear in recalling what it said to the Minister's
office, it was not clear from the notes taken how much detail
was provided on the WMD story. The normal practice in these circumstances
was for ministers' offices to confer with other Government departments
to seek their agreement of a minister commenting on a subject
outside their area of responsibility.

The Board noted that inadequate note-taking was
a common problem amongst programme-makers and this sometimes made
it difficult for the GPCC to adjudicate on complaints.

a. Single Source

On the use of a single source, Stephen Whittle
said from his inquiries he was confident that the appropriate
editorial processes had been followed robustly before the item
was broadcast. He confirmed he did not know the identity of the
source, but the editor of the programme was informed as was the
Head of Radio News and both were convinced that the source was
credible and reliable. Since the item was broadcast, Richard Sambrook
had been informed of the source's identity and Greg Dyke had been
told what position the source held.

In response to questions, Richard Sambrook said
it was not known if the source used by Susan Watts for a similar
item on Newsnight was the same as that used by Andrew Gilligan.
If it was the same - as it appeared to be - this confirmed the
accuracy of Andrew Gilligan's reporting of the source. If it was
a different source, this served to reinforce the story further.

On anonymity of sources, Stephen Whittle said
the Guidelines were more relevant to contributors who provided
themselves on air but required protection because the allegations
they were making could put them in danger. Mark Damazer noted
a comment that the Guidelines on anonymity did not appear to apply
in this case. He said it was very difficult to have a guideline
that applied to off-the-record sources as the key judgment in
deciding whether to use them was consideration of the context
of the information they were providing. Greg Dyke added that in
this case, it was already public that the Government had wrongly
presented evidence as official intelligence when it was in fact
material retrieved from the internet (known as the "dodgy
dossier").

Governors responded that this line of defence was not convincing. The context in this case created an obligation on the BBC to report, but was not the justification for it. The key argument was the judgment of senior editorial staff that the source was credible and on that basis the Board was content that management had acted appropriately.

Mark Damazer said that in judging the credibility of a source, the following factors were considered:

their relationship to the journalist; ie how
well known they were

whether information provided previously had been
proven to be correct

the plausibility of the information they were
providing.

In this case, the source met all these criteria
and therefore the context of the "dodgy dossier" only
added weight to the decision to use the information.

Concluding this part of the discussion, Gavyn
Davies said the Board was content that the BBC had acted appropriately
in reporting the information provided by a single source.

b. Contacts with the Government

Stephen Whittle said achieving clarity on the
contacts between the Today team and Government departments
on this occasion was difficult because a full note had not been
kept. He ran through the sequence of contacts established from
his inquiries. In addition to the information already provided
by Richard Sambrook about requests for an interview with Adam
Ingram, he reported that Andrew Gilligan spoke to a MOD press
officer (mobile-to-mobile) at around 6.30pm to inform them that
the interview would be extended to include WMD. The MOD's account
of this contact was different, claiming that Andrew Gilligan mentioned
only the cluster bomb story and only upon being asked said there
was another issue but this was not a matter for the MOD. Andrew
Gilligan agrees he said something to indicate that the WMD issue
was not principally a MOD story, but claims that he only spoke
about WMD during the conversation and not cluster bombs. It was
possible that he might have said something like: "we've asked
for an interview on cluster bombs, but we also want to talk about
WMD".

Stephen Whittle said it was unlikely that Andrew
Gilligan would have discussed the cluster bomb story beyond a
passing reference as it was not something he was working on and
therefore something he knew nothing about it.

Following a further exchange between another
member of the programme team and the MOD, the department confirmed
that Adam Ingram would appear the following morning and be prepared
to talk about both issues (having consulted the FCO about cluster
bombs). The night editor spoke further to the MOD at around 10.30pm
and sought confirmation that Adam Ingram would take questions
on WMD in addition to cluster bombs. He concurs with the MOD's
recollection that no detail was provided on the WMD issue, but
the night editor assumed that the detail had already been covered
in earlier conversations.

Stephen Whittle said the BBC's weakness in this
area was the lack of solid and reliable notes about what was said
to the MOD about the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan's source.
At that time, the Today Programme was not planning to run
the WMD story as a scoop, but more as a "chatter in the air"
issue. The programme's running order showed it was not the lead
item and this might explain why the notes kept were not as contemporaneous
and complete as they might have been.

In response to questions, he confirmed that the
Gilligan story was broadcast first at 6.05am and Number 10's response
at 7.40am. Caroline Thomson said a potential difficulty for the
BBC was not contacting Number 10 in advance to provide an opportunity
for them to deny the story in advance of broadcast.

In response to further questions, Stephen Whittle
said that Producers' Guidelines were not explicit about advance
notification. The Guidelines required programme-makers to provide
an opportunity to those named to respond.

During discussion, Governors made the following
points:

The culture of Today had become one of
creating rather than reporting news. It had moved in line with
tabloid and Sunday newspaper journalism where contacting people
who might deny a story were avoided. This should be examined in
due course to determine if the BBC should operate in this fashion.
That said this general view did not diminish the opinion that
the BBC was right to broadcast the story.

There was a view expressed that Today
had been naïve about the potential power of this story, but
this was not widely shared. Furthermore, it was not surprising
that the BBC had become wiser after the event to the importance
of the story as other events had increased its significance.

That said some Governors did believe that Number
10 should have been contacted prior to broadcast as it would have
placed the BBC in a much stronger position to defend its decision.
On the other hand, caution was expressed in creating a situation
where any report that might upset Number 10 required the BBC to
contact the Prime Minister's office in advance.

Gavyn Davies concluded this part of the discussion
saying that the majority view of the board was that the allegations
should have been put to Number 10 in advance of the broadcast.
However, he noted the strong concerns expressed by some Governors
about including this in the statement that would follow this meeting
and said it would not be included in strong terms.

Broadcast of denials

Richard Sambrook said BBC News disputed the claim
that it had alleged the "45 minutes" had been inserted
against the wishes of the Chairman of the JIC and Intelligence
Chiefs. The source had said "against our wishes" and
this had not been extrapolated to any individual. As to denials
of the story, the Prime Minister, John Reid, Jack Straw and Baroness
Amos were all provided the opportunity on air over the following
days. But each time this occurred, it was necessary to repeat
the allegations for them to deny.

Following an account from Mark Damazer about
how the "45 minute claim" had been disputed by the Government
since the broadcast, and a discussion by Governors about the accuracy
of the report, Gavyn Davies reminded the Board that it was not
a matter for them. He noted that Pauline Neville-Jones did not
believe the Intelligence denials have been given due prominence
and her criticisms of BBC News for the balance of its reporting
in this particular area. In response, Richard Sambrook said he
would undertake a detailed review of the JIC denials that had
been broadcast. Gavyn Davies said however that the majority of
the Board had not expressed doubt about the coverage of Intelligence
denials and therefore the review that Richard Sambrook had promised
would not be made public. Indeed, doing so would indicate a "climb-down"
by the BBC.

In response to questions about whether management
was comfortable that the required high standard of reporting had
been retained throughout Today on 29 May, Richard Sambrook
said that Andrew Gilligan had been very clear about his report
being based on a single source. John Humphreys had, however, used
some phrases that were infelicitous, but Andrew Gilligan had but
[sic: put] him back on track during their exchanges.

Gavyn Davies reminded the Board that a formal
complaint had not been received about Today, even though
Richard Sambrook had made sure Alastair Campbell was aware of
the route he could follow should he wish to do so.

Concluding this part of the discussion, Gavyn
Davies said the Board agreed that the Producers' Guidelines had
been upheld. The majority view of the Board was that the allegations
should have been put to Number 10 in advance of broadcast. However,
in light of some concern expressed by Governors about including
this in the statement, he would ensure the wording in relation
to this aspect was carefully drafted to avoid any indication that
this was a requirement for any story that might offend Number
10 in the future. But he believed it important to "nod in
the direction" of Number 10 that the notes kept by the programme-makers
on contacts with the Government were inadequate for the Board
to confirm that every effort had been made to inform the Government
appropriately. Finally, the majority view of the Board was that
the Government had received sufficient opportunities to deny the
story.

3. RULES PERMITTING BBC JOURNALISTS TO WRITE
NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Gavyn Davies asked the Board to consider whether
it should request a review of the rules that currently permit
BBC journalists to write newspaper articles.

In response to questions about whether Andrew
Gilligan's Mail on Sunday article, published on 1 June,
had been vetted in accordance with the rules, Richard Sambrook
said it had not. Originally, he had been informed that Kevin Marsh
(Editor of Today) had vetted the article and this would have been
in line with procedures. However, more lately, it had transpired
this had not occurred. Richard Sambrook added that he was on record
as saying the rules associated with writing newspaper articles
would be reviewed.

Greg Dyke said he was against allowing BBC journalists
to write newspaper articles, but it was difficult to prevent in
many circumstances because of the freelance contracts most journalists
concerned had with the BBC. In any case, he believed it was an
issue to be examined at a later date and separately to that currently
before the Board. Gavyn Davies disagreed, saying it was relevant
because Andrew Gilligan had gone further in the Mail on Sunday
in reporting his source's allegations.

Other Governors agreed, saying it was an important
issue and the principle of it required examination. Richard Sambrook's
public commitment was helpful, but it was important that the Governors
themselves were seen to be examining the issue as it was a matter
that concerned the Board.

Gavyn Davies agreed and said the statement would
say that the Board would look again at the rules that permitted
this following the study already promised by the Director of News.

The meeting was suspended at around 8.10pm whilst
Gavyn Davies prepared a statement for publication.

273. After the Governor's meeting Mr Davies
issued the statement set out in paragraph 56. On 7 July Mr Davies
sent the following e-mail to the Governors:

I attach a clean copy of the Statement which
I issued on the Board's behalf last night.

I was aware during the meeting that I may have
been rushing the discussion more than usual, because there was
a hard deadline around 9pm. If we had missed this deadline, the
Governors' conclusions would have missed the morning papers completely,
and would then have been swamped by the news about the FAC report
on Monday. This explains why it was so important to get the statement
agreed quickly in our final meeting. (Thanks to Pauline's eagle
eye, we narrowly avoided the cardinal error of writing the mistaken
words "allegations made by Andrew Gilligan" in the final
draft; in the end, it correctly said "allegations reported
by Andrew Gilligan".)

Chairing the meeting, I was very impressed by
the seriousness and toughness displayed by the Governors. My view
is that we demonstrated that the Board of Governors is not a body
which can be easily bullied, either by politicians or the management.
I am sure that we will benefit from demonstrating this in the
long run, even if we get some of the familiar flak in the immediate
future.

There were two traps which we could have fallen
into on Sunday - caving in to No 10, or caving in to the executive.
I strongly believe that we did neither.

I asked someone who has worked for the BSC how
other regulators would have reacted to having to rule on the Campbell
allegations, if Ofcom were ever to get responsibility for BBC
impartiality. He said simply: "In my experience, they would
run a mile."

As I write this e-mail, the FAC report has just
been published. Given that the key conclusion, "clearing"
Alastair Campbell survived only on the casting vote of the chair,
and much of the rest of the report was highly critical of Mr Campbell's
role, it looks as though the BBC has emerged intact from the report,
though some will say that it is still very messy. I hope, perhaps
optimistically, that this may give us a chance to move on to other
matters.

Alastair Campbell and Jack Straw have both now
withdrawn their general claims that the BBC was systemically biased
during the war. This is a major step forward, and a victory for
the Governors, since this would not have happened without our
intervention. It also suggests there may be a willingness to de-escalate
the overall row with the BBC. But the government is still adamant
that the Gilligan report, in its specific allegation, was plain
wrong, and have - very sensibly from their point of view - noted
that the Governors did not substantiate the accuracy of this report.
Richard Sambrook has said in public that the government and BBC
News may have to "agree to disagree" on this. Since
there is nothing much more to be said on this until the intelligence
committee reports in September, the row may begin to move off
the front pages.

274. Before considering the issues relating
to the BBC set out in paragraph 260 it is also appropriate to
comment again on the distinction (referred to in paragraph 9)
between an allegation that the Government probably knew at the
time of publication that intelligence contained in the dossier
was wrong or questionable and an allegation that intelligence
contained in the dossier, which the Government believed to be
reliable, was in reality unreliable. Although to some extent the
latter allegation is implicit in the former allegation and future
discoveries or the absence of discoveries in Iraq may show the
latter allegation to be correct (an issue which does not come
within my terms of reference and on which I express no opinion),
the former allegation is a much graver one and is an attack on
the integrity of the Government itself, and Mr Gilligan's broadcasts
on 29 May reported this express allegation. I consider that the
view of Sir David Manning (in the summer of 2003 Foreign Policy
Adviser to the Prime Minister and Head of the Overseas and Defence
Secretariat in the Cabinet Office) as to the gravity of this allegation
was fully justified. He said:

[18 August, page 178, line 19]

A. I should say there was strong feeling about
the accusations that had been made by Andrew Gilligan.

Q. Can you perhaps tell us about your feelings
in that respect?

A. I think because it was seen as a pretty direct
attack on the integrity of the Prime Minister and officials at
No.10, in the sense that they would try to persuade the chairman
of the Joint Intelligence Committee to massage or to revise his
conclusions, his recommendations, for political convenience, I
saw it personally as also an unjustified attack on John Scarlett
personally, the chairman of the JIC, because implicit in this
is the assumption that he is willing to do this. But having myself,
in a previous incarnation, sat on the Joint Intelligence Committee,
I also thought it absolutely inconceivable that even if there
were to be such collusion between officials in No.10 and the chairman
of the JIC, it was absolutely inconceivable that the senior figures
around the JIC table would agree to this. So I felt it was a very
serious attack, not only, however, upon the integrity of individuals
but a very serious attack on the integrity of the processes of
Government. The JIC process is of no use if it is one that can
be moulded or massaged by political fiat. It must be seen to be
the best and most scrupulous assessment possible. Therefore there
were very strong feelings about this attack. I think that is how
I perceived it. I did not see it, myself, as a row between two
particular individuals or between No.10 and a particular part
of the media. I saw it as something where it was important that
we tried to restore elements of trust, which had been challenged
by this very direct assault on the integrity both of people and
of process.

Q. You mentioned that it was not perceived as
such amongst the senior civil servants, effectively, which is
where you were dealing with it from.

A. Yes.

Q. But you obviously had substantial interaction
with those who are not civil servants. Was it perceived as such
amongst them, do you know, from your own knowledge?

A. Well, I think there were certainly moments
of personal anger. I do not want to pretend they were not personally
affronted by some of these attacks. But I think there was a sense
this was an attack or a charge or an allegation of a different
kind. It struck the very heart of whether or not you believe that
the Prime Minister is going to tell the chairman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee that his conclusions of his Committee are
inconvenient and they must be changed for the political convenience
of the Prime Minister of the day. And I think that was a charge
that went beyond the usual, if I can put it like this, sparring
that goes on and was seen as a very fundamental attack on the
processes of Government and trust therein.

Although the question whether intelligence approved
and provided to the Government by the JIC was reliable is a very
important question, it is not one which involves the integrity
of the Government: there is a great difference between broadcasting
an allegation that intelligence provided to the Government was
unreliable and broadcasting an allegation that the Government
knew that intelligence set out in the dossier was wrong or questionable
before it published it in the dossier, and it was the broadcasting
of the latter allegation by the BBC which drew Dr Kelly into the
controversy about Mr Gilligan's broadcasts.

275. The issues which arise in relation
to the BBC have to be decided against the background of three
matters which I have already decided have been established:

(1) Dr Kelly did not say to Mr Gilligan that
the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong
or questionable before it was included in the dossier or that
the 45 minutes claim was not included in the original draft because
it only came from a single source. The allegations reported by
Mr Gilligan that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes
claim was wrong or questionable before the dossier was published
and that it was not inserted in the first draft of the dossier
because it only came from one source and the intelligence agencies
did not really believe it was necessarily true, were unfounded.

(2) Mr Gilligan accepted in his evidence that his
broadcast at 6.07am gave the wrong impression on these matters
and that he should have scripted the broadcast before he made
it.

(3) The report that the Government probably knew
that the 45 minutes claim was wrong or questionable before it
was inserted in the dossier was an extremely grave allegation
which attacked the integrity of the Prime Minister and the Government
and it did not constitute merely a piece of political debate or
the normal type of comment which is made in relation to a matter
of great public interest on which other reporters are commenting.

276. Both the BBC and Mr Gilligan accepted
that there could be criticism of the 6.07am broadcast, and the
BBC also accepted that there could be criticism of the way in
which the BBC treated the broadcast thereafter, but the case which
was made on behalf of both the BBC and Mr Gilligan, although with
some differing emphases, was that notwithstanding those criticisms,
there was great public interest in the September 2002 dossier
and serious issues of great public importance arose in relation
to the reliability of the intelligence contained in it, and therefore
it was right for the BBC and Mr Gilligan to report the concern
of Mr Gilligan's source that the dossier had been sexed up and
that there was concern in intelligence circles about the way in
which the 45 minutes claim was worded in the dossier. The point
was further made that there had been a number of similar claims
in the media and that the evidence of Dr Brian Jones showed that
the report that there was concern in intelligence circles was
correct.

277. Stress was also laid on the point that
the criticisms of Mr Gilligan's broadcast very largely related
to what he said in the broadcast commencing at 6.07am and to the
part of the broadcast commencing at 7.32am in which he said that
the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was questionable,
and that in his broadcast commencing at 7.32am and in subsequent
broadcasts Mr Gilligan made it clear that the information which
he had been told was dubious did come from the intelligence agencies.
The point was also made that Mr Gilligan's report that the intelligence
relating to the 45 minutes claim was only single sourced was shown
to be correct. Therefore the BBC and Mr Gilligan contended that,
despite the flaws which they accepted in Mr Gilligan's reports,
they were nevertheless performing an important public service
in reporting the doubts and reservations which existed in the
intelligence agencies, as established by Dr Jones' evidence, about
the wording of the 45 minutes claim in the dossier.

278. The BBC and Mr Gilligan also laid stress
on the point that in his broadcast Mr Gilligan did not report
that he or the BBC believed that the Government probably knew
that the 45 minutes claim was wrong, rather he reported that this
was the belief of a source who, because of his knowledge of intelligence
matters and the preparation of the dossier, was well placed to
express such a view and whom Mr Gilligan was entitled to view
as a credible source. The point was further made, particularly
on behalf of Mr Gilligan, that insofar as he could, Mr Gilligan
had found confirmation for what his source had told him in reports
in other newspapers stating that intelligence sources were unhappy
about the contents of the dossier and in the fact that the Government
had had to admit that the dossier which it had issued in February
2003 (about links between Saddam Hussein and Al Quaeda) was flawed.
Mr Gilligan also said in evidence on 12 August:

[12 August, page 30, line 6]

A Then I basically sought to corroborate
the story. I went to see -

Q. How did you try to do that?

A. I went to see a couple of people. I saw the
- well, I will call them senior contacts in Government; and I
asked them about this. I did not tell them obviously that David
Kelly had said it but I said I have been told this and was there
any truth in it. And neither of them would confirm or deny -

Q. Sorry to interrupt. What did you say you had
been told?

A. I said I had been told that the dossier had
been transformed the week before it was published and that this
was done at the behest of Alastair Campbell.

Q. So those two things were what you put to the
two senior Government contacts?

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. What did they say?

A. Neither of them denied it. One of them said
something I could not take as a confirmation but said, you know:
I think you should keep digging, something like that. But when
somebody says something like that, it is not a confirmation and
it cannot be taken as such but it is obviously not a denial either.
And then the others just refused to talk about it. I know both
of these people - I believe anyway both of these people would
have been in positions to know about the dossier.

279. Both the BBC and Mr Gilligan relied
on the recognition in the jurisprudence of the United Kingdom
and also in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
that the press and other parts of the media have a vital role
to play in a democratic society in fully reporting on matters
of public concern and public interest and in exposing to public
gaze matters which the Government might wish to remain hidden.
Mr Caldecott commenced his closing statement on behalf of the
BBC by saying:

[25 September, page 94, line 7]

there can be few subjects of greater public
interest than reasons presented by a Government to its own people
as possible grounds for war. That - let there be no doubt about
it - was the purpose of the September dossier. It was an assessment
of the threat posed by a foreign power against whom hostilities
were in serious contemplation.

It was advertised by a label which is almost
unique in British political history. The Prime Minister was to
share with the people the gist of the formal intelligence assessments
he had received from the Joint Intelligence Committee. The invitation
was to share the Prime Minister's conclusion, having shared the
intelligence.

Mr Caldecott concluded his statement by saying:

[25 September, page 124, line 3]

the BBC anticipates criticism of the 6.07
broadcast in particular and its treatment thereafter, but they
do ask the Inquiry to have in mind the public interest in the
remainder of its extensive coverage of Dr Kelly's concerns about
the dossier, which the BBC believes the public had a right to
know.

In her closing statement, on behalf of Mr Gilligan,
Ms Rogers said:

[25 September, page 134, line 7]

The decision to go to war, the Government's justification
for it, deserves the closest possible scrutiny. A defence correspondent
who failed to raise these matters in the continuing public debate
would be failing in his duty.

It is the role of the journalist to investigate
and report upon matters of legitimate public interest. This journalism
was not an unwarranted intrusion into someone's private life,
it was not celebrity gossip. It was a classic example of working
journalism reporting on a matter of public interest.

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right.
It is a right to receive as well as a right to communicate information.
The media play a vital role in a democracy as the eyes and ears
of the public. The law protects freedom of expression not just
as a lofty principle, not just as a matter of theory, but as a
matter of practical reality.

..........

[25 September, page 137, line 9]

Today we do not take the word of public figures
automatically at face value. We question what we are told. It
is right that we should. It is healthy for society that we do.
It is by public debate, vigorous open debate, that we are all
better informed. The issues raised in this reporting were big
issues, serious issues of substance. The reporting of claims and
responses to claims is the common currency of political debate.
The Government, doing its job, responded to Andrew Gilligan's
story swiftly and as fully as it wanted. The Government has a
vast dedicated and sophisticated communications machinery. It
had no difficulty in getting what it wanted to say reported in
the media, both on 29th May and after it made press statements,
statements in Parliament, and what it said was reported just as
widely as what Dr Kelly had said.

280. Counsel for the BBC and for Mr Gilligan
were right to state that the communication by the media of information
(including information obtained by investigative reporters) on
matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life
in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such
information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists
for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations
of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians,
should not be made by the media. Where a reporter is intending
to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of
others the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper
should ensure that a system is in place whereby his editor or
editors give careful consideration to the wording of the report
and to whether it is right in all the circumstances to broadcast
or publish it. The issue of untruthful allegations of fact in
relation to political matters made by the media has been considered
recently by the House of Lords in Reynolds v Times Newspapers
Ltd [2001]2 AC 127 and I set out relevant passages in the judgments
of Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lord Cooke of Thorndon and Lord
Hobhouse of Woodborough in appendix 17.

281. The allegations in Mr Gilligan's broadcast
on 29 May that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes
claim was wrong or questionable and that the 45 minutes claim
was not included in the first draft of the dossier because it
was only single sourced were unfounded. Whatever doubts there
may now be about the reliability of the intelligence in relation
to the 45 minutes claim, and whether Dr Brian Jones' concerns
about the wording of the 45 minutes claim in the dossier are ultimately
shown to have been valid, the claim in the dossier was sanctioned
at the time of publication by the JIC. Mr Scarlett (the Chairman
of the JIC), Sir Richard Dearlove (the Chief of SIS), Sir David
Omand, Air Marshall Sir Joseph French (the Chief of Defence Intelligence),
and Mr Anthony Cragg (the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence),
all gave evidence that the JIC gave its approval to the claim
being set out in the dossier, the claim itself having first appeared
in a normal assessment prepared by the JIC assessment staff. A
report by Mr Gilligan that the 45 minutes claim in the dossier
was sanctioned by the JIC but that a source had told him that
one section in the DIS had expressed concern about the wording
of the claim would have been an accurate report. But Mr Gilligan
broadcast a very different and much graver allegation which was
unfounded.

282. I am unable to accept, in the context
of Mr Gilligan's broadcasts, the distinction which he and the
BBC rely on, between a report that the BBC believed that the Government
probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong and a report
that a source had told the BBC that the Government probably knew
that the 45 minutes claim was wrong. This is not a distinction
recognised by the law in relation to actions for defamation. In
relation to some spheres of public life on which the BBC reports
it may be permissible to report what an anonymous but apparently
credible source had said. But I consider that when a charge of
such gravity is made, as that the Government probably knew that
the 45 minutes claim was wrong, the impression created in the
mind of the listener and the harm done to confidence in the integrity
of the Government differs little whether the allegation is made
directly by the BBC or is reported by the BBC as an allegation
made by an apparently credible and well informed source.

283. Mr Gilligan's broadcast at 6.07am was
unscripted and made from his own home and he accepts that it should
have been scripted. In many cases it will be necessary for a BBC
reporter to broadcast a report which has not been previously scripted
and approved by the editors of the programme. But the BBC knew
that in his broadcast on 29 May Mr Gilligan was going to report
serious allegations against the Government. This was clear from
one of the headlines read by Corrie Corfield at 6.00am on 29 May:

A senior official involved in preparing the Government's
dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has told this programme
that the document was rewritten just before publication - to make
it more exciting. An assertion that some of the weapons could
be activated within 45 minutes was among the claims added at a
late stage. The official claimed that the intelligence services
were unhappy with the changes, which he said were ordered by 10
Downing Street.

284. Therefore I consider that in relation
to a subject of such importance and of such gravity the BBC should
not have permitted Mr Gilligan to broadcast his report at 6.07am
without editors having seen the script of what he was going to
say and having considered whether it should be approved. I think
that the validity of this view is confirmed by the e-mail which
Mr Kevin Marsh, the editor of the Today programme, sent to Mr
Stephen Mitchell, the Head of Radio News, on 27 June 2003:

Some thoughts clearly I have to talk
to AG [Andrew Gilligan] early next week: I hope that by then my
worst fears - based on what I'm hearing from the spooks this afternoon
- aren't realised. Assuming not, the guts of what I would say
are:

This story was a good piece of investigative
journalism, marred by flawed reporting - our biggest millstone
has been his loose use of language and lack of judgment in some
of his phraseology.

It was marred also by the quantity of writing
for other outlets that varied what was said or was loose with
the terms of the story.

That it is in many ways a result of the loose
and in some ways distant relationship he's been allowed to have
with Today.

I will propose that we change that:

That he works substantially in the office.

That he comes in to TVC to put his pieces together
and to file (he usually files from home)

That all his proposed stories are discussed with
me, in detail as early as possible in the process - face to face
if possible

That anonymous sources pass an explicit credibility
test with me.

That his material is filed/assembled in time
to be heard by me or a senior Ass Ed in time to make changes.

That we agree on a script or on core elements
of a script that he does not subsequently vary.

That he stops writing for non-BBC outlets?? OR

That all writing for non-BBC outlets is seen
24 hours in advance of copy time and before it is filed by two
editors/managers - if changes are necessary, the changed copy
is seen, again before being filed??

Does this sound too harsh?? Thoughts?? I'd like
anything I say to him to be consistent with anything anyone else
above me in the hierarchy

The relevance of this e-mail is not diminished by
the e-mail of congratulations which Mr Marsh had previously sent
to Mr Gilligan dated 30 May 2003:

Statement of the obvious, I guess, but it's really
good to have you back here in the UK. Great week; great stories,
well handled and well told. 'Course it's meant Today has had a
great week too . and that's lifted everyone. We still have
to have that conversation - but since you're entirely nocturnal
while I'm a normal human being, we don't seem to meet too often.
Maybe you could creek the coffin lid open next week during daylight
hours??? Anyhow, it's great to have you back on your beat. Talk
soon.

285. As I have stated, Mr Gilligan accepted
in his evidence that he had made errors in his broadcast at 6.07am
on 29 May, and a number of witnesses from the BBC accepted in
the course of their evidence that the BBC had made errors in relation
to Mr Gilligan's broadcast on 29 May and in dealing with the Government's
complaints about those broadcasts.

The evidence of Mr Gavyn Davies,
the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC, Mr Greg Dyke,
the Director General of the BBC, and Mr Richard Sambrook, the
Director of News of the BBC

286. At the end of his evidence Mr Gavyn
Davies said:

[28 August, page 166, line 17]

Q. And is there anything else that you wanted
to add?

A. I think on behalf of the whole BBC I would
like to put on record that we enormously regret the death of Dr
Kelly. The BBC has the deepest sympathy for Dr Kelly's family;
and all of us in the BBC are profoundly sorry about the tragic
events of the last two months and we will do our utmost to learn
important lessons for the future.

287. At the end of his evidence Mr Greg
Dyke said:

[15 September, page 183, line 23]

Q. Is there anything else that you know of the
circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death that you can assist
his Lordship with or anything else you would like to say?

A. Well, I think I would say this: that, as I
have said earlier, what the processes of the last few weeks have
certainly exposed is that politics and journalism are far from
exact sciences, and the forensic examination really of the events
of May, June and July has revealed I think areas where in hindsight
we would have - we might have behaved differently. We might have
done things differently. Obviously we should learn from that.
Naturally we will not prejudge the findings of the Inquiry before
settling on any changes but I have asked our General Counsel Nicholas
Eldred to begin to look at some of the lessons which we might
learn from this. For instance, I have asked him with assistance
from senior editorial figures in the BBC to look at aspects of
the producer guidelines, particularly concerning anonymous sources
and the description of them. I have certainly asked that in future
whether the first of all broadcasts of controversial items should
in future be scripted as opposed to - we will look again at the
use of the - the concept of the two-way, in terms of controversial
pieces.

..........

[15 September, page 185, line 4]

A. Richard Sambrook, as I think Gavyn Davies
has already told you, is himself looking and the whole executive
will discuss what should be the rules on BBC journalists writing
for other newspapers. As I say, I have no doubt there will be
lessons for us all to learn, but there will certainly be lessons
for the BBC to learn and we will take account of those.

288. In his evidence when examined by counsel
for the BBC, Mr Caldecott, the Director of News of the BBC, Mr
Sambrook, said:

[17 September, page 107, line 1]

Q. Are you aware that both Mr Dyke and Mr Davies
have given evidence to the effect that there are lessons to be
learnt by the BBC?

A. I am, yes.

Q. Is that a view you share?

A. Yes, it is. I think there are a number of
lessons that the BBC will have to take from this.

Q. Can I just run through some possibilities
and get your comments on them? Mr Gilligan referred, this morning,
to the fact that the 6.07 broadcast was in fact produced live
and not scripted. Have you any comment to make about that?

A. I think it is clear that any report which
sets out a set of serious allegations should be carefully scripted
in advance.

289. Whilst accepting that there were some
grounds for criticism of its conduct the case made by the witnesses
for the BBC consisted of six main points:

(1) In the weeks immediately after the broadcast
on 29 May the Government had complained about those broadcasts
in general terms and had not complained specifically about the
report that the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes claim
was wrong and the complaints which the Government did make were
distorted by the aggressive tones in which they were made by Mr
Campbell and by his attack on the integrity and independence of
the BBC. In his evidence Mr Dyke said:

[15 September, page 150, line 20]

MR DINGEMANS: We have seen some of the extracts
from Mr Campbell's evidence where he said that the story was a
lie and those aspects. I will not take you to those because I
think we have seen them enough before. But what was your reaction
to those attacks on the stories?

A. Well obviously this was a pretty unprecedented
- as I said, an unprecedented attack.

LORD HUTTON: Well, did you consider, Mr Dyke,
whether Mr Campbell's complaint to the FAC related to the entirety
of Mr Gilligan's broadcast on 29th May or whether his complaint
related, in particular, to this allegation: the Government probably
knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong?

A. Well, that had not been the nature of the
complaints up until that time, in the two letters that we had
got.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. So it seemed to me a much more general attack
based around a particular story or based around a story, but a
general attack on the BBC. So, remember he was accusing us of
lying; he was saying that we had run an agenda against the war
or certain parts of the BBC had run an agenda against the war.
These are very serious charges to make against a broadcasting
organisation.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. So it seemed - he had also said we had effectively
accused the Prime Minister of lying, which Richard Sambrook said
to me was not - it would be almost impossible to construe what
we said as that. That is why I agreed that Richard should go back
to London and go on to the Today Programme to put our case.

(2) In his
broadcast at 6.07am Mr Gilligan was not making a direct allegation
on his own part or on the part of the BBC that the Government
probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong, but was reporting
the allegation of a source whom he regarded as credible and well
placed to make the allegation.

Mr Davies said:

[28 August, page 117, line 13]

I believe that if the BBC News reports
that the BBC believes something, the requirement for certainty
is much greater on behalf of the broadcaster. If the BBC reports
that a credible and reliable source believes something, then it
is clearly thought to be something that should be put into the
public domain, a valid remark to put into the public domain, but
it is clearly hinged on one person's view. And I think that that
was what this was.

A. The Governors had a great deal of information
going into the meeting and they had an important corroboration
for the Gilligan report, which continues to slip out of the mind
of the Government; and that is the Susan Watts reports. I said
in my first appearance before this Inquiry that the Susan Watts
report was not identical to the Gilligan report. I actually studied
both before I went into the meeting and I knew they were not identical,
but I equally knew that the burden of what Mr Gilligan had reported
in his many broadcasts on the subject at the end of May was a
close match to the burden of what Ms Watts reported on 2nd and
4th June. And I do not think it should be forgotten that that
is the case, because certainly in my mind, and in several other
Governors' mind, maybe the whole of the Board of Governors who
received the information before they went into the meeting, that
was seen as an important corroboration of the Gilligan story.

(4) The Government failed to make use of the
complaints procedures which are available to those who consider
that they have been unfairly criticised in the BBC broadcast.
In his evidence Mr Davies said:

[28 August, page 110, line 10]

Q. Were there any avenues, so far as you were
concerned, that might have been used to resolve the dispute?

A. Well, another troubling aspect of this, to
me, was that the Director General had told me that in a previous
letter to Mr Campbell, I think on 16th June or thereabouts, the
Director of News had suggested to Mr Campbell that if he felt
he had a complaint about inaccuracy of a particular broadcast
or unfairness, he should approach the BBC Programme Complaints
Unit, which I think would have given him due process for resolving
his complaint in a non-conflictual and non-public manner. He also
had the option, which I do not think he was told in that letter
specifically, of complaining to the Broadcasting Standards Commission
about unfairness. That is a body that is entirely independent
of the BBC and has the power, if it finds on the side of the complainant,
to ask the BBC to broadcast a correction.

(5) In his evidence to the FAC Mr Campbell had
launched an unprecedented attack on the integrity and independence
of the BBC and the Governors were under a duty in the public interest
to resist that attack:

In his evidence on 28 August Mr Davies said:

[28 August, page 109, line 12]

I felt this was an extraordinary moment.
I felt it was an almost unprecedented attack on the BBC to be
mounted by the head of communications at 10 Downing Street. Mr
Campbell accused the BBC of lying directly. He accused Mr Gilligan
of lying directly. He alleged that the BBC had accused the Prime
Minister of lying, something which I never believed the BBC had
done. And he accused the BBC of having followed an anti-war agenda
before, during and after the Iraqi conflict. I must say, I took
this as an attack on the impartiality of the BBC and the integrity
of the BBC, done with great vigour.

And in his evidence on 24 September Mr Davies
said:

[24 September, page 25, line 14]

we were faced with such an intemperate
attack on our impartiality and our integrity, Mr Sumption, that
I think it was perfectly reasonable for me to take the view that
the public were looking to the Governors to stand up for the independence
of the BBC, not to stand up for the management but to stand up
for the public interest.

Q. What you were saying was that whatever details
might emerge about the precise facts about the 45 minutes claim,
(1) there should be no compromise of the kind you refer to at
the beginning of that paragraph and (2) the Governors must not
give way but must be seen to support the management.

A. Absolutely not saying that whatsoever. It
does not say anything about supporting the management in there.
Nor would I accept your interpretation of the first part of that
paragraph. The first part of that paragraph, I can tell you, meant:
we must not do a "behind the stairs" deal with No.10
Downing Street which the public will see as a means of taking
off the public agenda a matter of legitimate public interest.

Q. You were so concerned about creating the outward
appearance of succumbing to political pressure that you were urging
the Governors that they should not give an inch whatever a further
investigation of the facts might show. Is that not the position?

A. It is absolutely not the position, Mr Sumption.
I do not, at any stage in my life, ignore the facts. And the most
important thing, undoubtedly, is to tell the truth to the public.
But what I was concerned about here - and I can tell you it was
in the face of absolutely unprecedented pressure from the Director
of Communications at 10 Downing Street, not an insignificant figure
in the Government at the time. In the face of that pressure, I
then believed and I now believe, and I had the full support of
all of the Board in saying that it was a legitimate public duty
of the Board to say that that pressure was intolerable.

(6) It was not feasible for the Governors to
investigate themselves the accuracy of Mr Gilligan's report. Mr
Davies said in his evidence on 24 September:

[24 September, page 13, line 3]

MR SUMPTION: Mr Davies, you mentioned, in answer
to my question, the point that the Governors do not want to duplicate
the judgment of the executives. No doubt in investigating matters
that come before them the Governors will depend on the assistance
of senior executives to provide them with information, but you
will surely agree that their role is to form an independent judgment
and not simply to act as amplifiers for views which the BBC staff
have already formed?

A. I agree with that, Mr Sumption; and if you
knew my colleagues you would not think they were acting as amplifiers
to anybody.

Q. Let us look at what did happen in this case.
You have given evidence at phase 1 that it would not have been
possible for the BBC Governors to investigate the accuracy of
Mr Gilligan's report. Did you mean by that that the Governors
had no means of deciding whether the dossier had actually been
sexed up or not and, if so, by whom?

A. I think I made it clear in my evidence that
what I was referring to there is what I have come to know as the
intrinsic accuracy of what the source said. I felt, going into
the meeting, and I still feel today even more strongly having
seen what has happened at this Inquiry, that it was extremely
complicated, difficult and, as I said last time, actually literally
impossible for the Governors to get the information required to
determine the intrinsic accuracy of the source's allegations.
Therefore, we focused on whether the source was credible and reliable,
whether procedures had been followed and whether the source had
been accurately reported.

Q. Let us look at what they were in a position
to look into, because I think your last answer suggests that there
may be some common ground on that. The Governors were in a position,
were they not, to consider whether the journalist had a proper
support from his own source for what he had broadcast. They could
consider that, could they not?

A. The Governors could and did consider that
and asked management about it.

Q. In your phase 1 evidence you said that the
BBC had to be absolutely clear - these are your words - that they
were reporting the words of the source. That is the point that
the Governors could have investigated, is it not?

A. Mr Sumption, the word "investigated"
is a strong word here. The Governors questioned the management
on that aspect. It was not actually, at that stage, thought to
be the central issue facing the Governors, but they did question
management on that aspect.

Q. The Governors were in a position, were they
not, to consider whether the status of the source was such that
he could be expected to know the facts?

A. They were certainly in a position to determine
that, with the proviso that I do not think it would have been
right and proper, it would have been highly irregular for them
actually to have known who the source was.

Q. They could have been told what the status
of the source was without being told his name.

A. I do not believe that would have made any
sense at all. I think if they had been told what the status of
the source was in any precise terms they would effectively, almost
certainly, have been told who the source was. It would have been
quite easy, I think, as we have seen recently, to have deduced
who Dr Kelly was from an accurate description of what he did.

290. Having considered the evidence given
by the witnesses from the BBC (leaving aside the evidence given
by Mr Gilligan) I consider that the BBC was at fault in a number
of respects as follows:

(1) I have already stated that the BBC failed
to ensure proper editorial control over Mr Gilligan's broadcasts
on 29 May and, in particular, over his first broadcast at 6.07am.

(2) I consider that the BBC management was at fault
in failing to investigate properly and adequately the Government's
complaints that the report was false that the Government probably
knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong even before it decided
to put it in the dossier, in the following reports. The BBC management
failed, before Mr Sambrook wrote his letter of 27 June to Mr Campbell,
to make an examination of Mr Gilligan's notes on his personal
organiser of his meeting with Dr Kelly to see if they supported
the allegations which he had reported in his broadcast at 6.07am.
When the BBC management did look at Mr Gilligan's notes after
27 June it failed to appreciate that the notes did not fully support
the most serious of the allegations reported in the 6.07am broadcast,
and it therefore failed to draw the attention of the Governors
to the lack of support in the notes for the most serious of the
allegations. A factor which contributed to these failures was
the failure of the BBC management to appreciate the gravity of
the allegations reported in Mr Gilligan's broadcast at 6.07am
and I consider that the allegations made against the Government
in the broadcast at 6.07am were so grave and gave rise to such
a serious public controversy that it was unreasonable for the
BBC management to expect the Government to pursue its complaint
about them through the usual channels of the BBC Programme Complaints
Unit or the Broadcasting Standards Commission, procedures which
could take weeks or, perhaps, months before a conclusion was arrived
at. These failures are shown in the evidence of Mr Dyke, Mr Sambrook
and Mr Davies.

Mr Dyke said:

[15 September, page 148, line 22]

A. On 25th and 26th June I was chairing a BBC
- we have twice a year a BBC Executive Committee conference, this
was in Surrey - when the news came through of a pretty ferocious
attack which Alastair Campbell had launched not just against the
particular report broadcast by Andrew Gilligan, but on the BBC's
journalistic integrity and in particular on our coverage of the
war.

Q. Your coverage of the?

A. Of the war, sorry.

Q. And what was your reaction to that?

A. Well, I discussed it with Richard Sambrook
who was also at the conference. He had been invited by that time
to appear on the Today Programme the following day to answer Mr
Campbell's allegations and we both agreed that he should leave
the conference and go. I mean, an attack of this sort of scale
from the Government's Director of Strategy and Communications
was pretty near unprecedented, I would have thought.

LORD HUTTON: Had you, by this stage, read the
details of Mr Gilligan's broadcast report on 29th May, Mr Dyke?

A. (Pause). I do not remember.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. I think probably not.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. Probably not.

LORD HUTTON: You see, I have read already part
of the report which said that actually the Government probably
knew that the 45 minutes figure was wrong even before it decided
to put it in. Would you regard that as a very grave charge indeed
against the Government?

A. Well, of course it - it was a charge being
made not by the BBC but by a source to the BBC; but at that stage
I would not have read that. I would have received Stephen Whittle's
account of our process. The process was going pretty well. I would
have talked about this with Richard Sambrook. By this time remember
the story had died away. This had not been brought on to our radar
screen over the previous 10 days at all, 14 days.

LORD HUTTON: Whether the charge was made by the
BBC or by a source which the BBC was reporting, would you regard
it as a very serious allegation?

A. Oh, it is pretty serious charge. But there
is a distinction between a charge made by the BBC and a charge
made by a source to the BBC.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. They are very - a very different - they carry
a different degree of gravity.

..........

[15 September, page 157, line 2]

Q When you were helping draft [Mr Sambrook's
letter of 27 June in reply to Mr Campbell's letter of 26 June],
did you, at that stage, listen to a tape of the broadcast on 29th
May?

A. (Pause). I think we read the transcript.

Q. You read the transcript. I think we have that
at BBC/1/5 onwards. What was your reaction, if we look at BBC/1/4,
to the opening of the piece which Mr Gilligan has told us was
unscripted and had followed a more neutral introduction by the
news reader?

A. Well, I think we - during that day we had
all the transcripts of not just the early piece, but we had all
the different pieces that were run throughout the morning; and
I read through them. What I did was to largely get involved in
the writing of the first half of the reply.

Q. Right. But having read, for example, this
bit at BBC/1/4 where it was said "the Government probably
knew that the 45 minute figure was wrong", I can take you
to other bits later on.

A. Sure. I cannot say that particular piece jumped
out at me. I mean, clearly we knew there were fairly serious allegations,
the point has been made, but I do not think that piece particularly
jumped out."

Q. Did you ask or were you shown, at this stage,
Mr Gilligan's notes of his meeting?

A. No.

Q. Were they available to the meeting that was
drafting this reply?

A. No. Mr Gilligan was there, but - he was in
the part of the meeting in the other part of the office, he was
not at the meeting where I was. But we assumed that these replies
were accurate.

LORD HUTTON: Why did you assume they were accurate,
Mr Dyke? I mean very strong protests were being made by the Government
on this particular point and the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee had said that the report was wrong. Now, why did you
not consider the accuracy of it?

A. Because we were reporting a source. I mean,
there is a real distinction, and it has been, I think, muddled
in a lot of the reporting, including I would say some of our own
reporting of this issue.

MR DINGEMANS: Will you explain the distinction?

A. The distinction was whether this was the BBC
saying this or whether this was the BBC reporting the source.
We were reporting a source. There are questions that have to be
asked when you are doing that, but that work had been done and
the view was that this was a credible source to report.

Mr Sambrook said:

[17 September, page 110, line 17]

Q. Can I, please, just move on to some matters
involving you rather more closely? The reply to Mr Campbell's
substantially long letter of complaint of 26th June was, in part,
drafted by you?

A. It was, yes.

Q. Do you accept that there were some errors
in that letter [of 27 June] as to what Dr Kelly had in fact said
to Mr Gilligan?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. Had you looked at Mr Gilligan's notes at the
time that you drafted that reply?

A. No, I had not, no.

Q. Do you accept, with hindsight, that you should
have done?

A. Yes, I think if I had been able to go through
Andrew Gilligan's notes in some detail and gone through them with
him in some detail, we might have got to a point where we realised
these were not comments that were directly attributable to Dr
Kelly; and clearly I regret that.

Q. Was Mr Gilligan involved in the drafting process
of that letter?

A. Yes, he was.

Q. I do not think we need turn the passages up,
but did Mr Gilligan consent to the letter going out in the form
that it did?

A. Yes he did. Indeed, part of the reason why
Mr Gilligan spent most of that day in our offices, as the letter
was being drafted, was that he could be consulted on matters such
as that.

..........

[17 September, page 122, line 3]

Q. Would you agree that the more serious the
allegation, the greater the care which you would expect the BBC
to take to ensure that it can be properly supported?

A. Yes.

Q. These were exceptionally serious allegations,
were they not?

A. Well, I think one thing I should make clear
is that I do not think the programme or indeed the BBC, in those
early weeks, ever took the wording of the 6.07 broadcast or that
phrase within the 6.07 broadcast to be the definitive version
of the allegations that we were making. I think our view was the
definitive version was the scripted version, in the news bulletins
at 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock and 8 o'clock and at 7.32. The live two-ways
at 6 o'clock are deemed by the programme, although it is certainly
true the audience does not necessarily perceive them this way,
as a sort of preview for the major reports that are coming up
during that day's programme. So I think the mindset on the programme,
and I think this continued for some time afterwards, was that
the definition of this item, in the BBC's view, were the scripted
versions of it and the 6.07 was something that had strayed from
what we believed to be the core allegations we were making or
that our source was making.

Q. Leaving aside the mindset of the programme,
you very fairly accept the audience would not necessarily have
perceived it the same way?

A. Indeed.

Q. In practice it is the most dramatic and gravest
allegation which will attract the most attention rather than the
allegation which is scripted?

A. Depending on how often it is repeated and
how many people hear it, yes.

Q. Yes. But if you make a sufficiently dramatic
allegation, other media will catch on to it, will they not?

A. They may do, yes.

Q. They are professional followers of each other's
copy, are they not?

A. They are.

Q. Now, you have already I think agreed in your
earlier evidence, and indeed I think it is implicit in the evidence
you have given today, that the 6.07 allegation that the Government
probably knew that the 45 minutes point was wrong before putting
it into the dossier was, in fact, going to strike people as an
exceptionally grave allegation. I think you have accepted that?

A. It clearly had that effect.

Q. Yes. It was an attack, was it not, on its
face, on the integrity of those who had been involved at the highest
levels in the production of the dossier?

A. In the way it was phrased, it clearly would
have had that effect. It is a different question about intent.

Q. Yes, I understand that. Even in the 7.32 broadcast,
the allegation was, was it not, that the Government had put the
45 minute point into the dossier against the advice of the Intelligence
Services, who had told them that they regarded it as questionable?

A. Words to that effect, yes.

..........

[17 September, page 160, line 8]

Q. Mr Dyke has given evidence and you I think
have associated yourself this afternoon with that evidence, to
virtually quote him, I think, that he wished that he had paused
in late June and ordered a full investigation of the whole issue.

A. Yes.

Q. That is one of the points that Mr Dyke made
which you associate yourself with?

A. I certainly think we should have paused and
considered at greater length the charges that were being levelled
against us. Whether that amounts to a full investigation of the
whole issue, I am not sure. But I certainly think the letter of
the 27th was written under considerable pressure, particularly
the deadline imposed on us by Mr Campbell, and if we had not been
under that pressure to respond then the errors in that letter
of the 27th might not have been made.

Q. There was not in fact a careful examination
of all the allegations that had been made, how far they could
be supported by Mr Gilligan's notes and what conclusions should
be drawn from that before the Governors' meeting, was there?

A. There was an investigation and examination.
What we did not do was go through the personal organiser notes
in point by point detail with Andrew. If we had done that, I think
it might have pointed up the two errors that we made in that letter.
But we certainly went through every point that Mr Campbell raised
in his letter. We discussed them in some detail, both with Andrew
Gilligan and with Kevin Marsh, and we just discussed them between
ourselves as a senior editorial team before coming out with that
letter. I would not want anybody to think that the letter was
written purely in haste. We spent as much time as we had over
it and we went into considerable detail on all the points that
Mr Campbell made.

Q. The truth is that the investigation that had
been carried out by the time the Governors met on 6th July was
no fuller than the investigation that had been made before you
wrote that letter, except in this respect: that you had, by now,
looked at both versions of Mr Gilligan's notes?

A. We had seen Mr Gilligan's notes, that is true.
We had also, by that time, identified many similarities in Ms
Watts' reports as well with the reports Andrew Gilligan had made,
which had taken us some time to get to because I was abroad when
her broadcasts originally went out. I think that also lent some
support to the broad thrust of the allegations that Mr Gilligan's
source was making.

Q. In the press release following the meeting
of the Governors, it was said that the BBC had never attacked
the good faith of the Prime Minister.

A. That is also what I said in my Today interview
on the 26th.

Q. Did anyone draw the Governors' intention to
what Mr Gilligan had in fact said at 6.07?

A. No, it was not at the forefront of our minds.
Indeed, it was not at the forefront of our minds in drafting the
response of the 27th because it was raised there by Mr Campbell
for the first time, as the third of those 12 questions, and indeed
in the previous three letters from the Government the wording
of the 6.07 broadcast had never been referred to you (sic) and
their complaints were much more about whether we had abided by
the producer guidelines, the strength given to denials and a number
of other issues, such as the description of the JIC. They had
never drawn the precise language of the 6.07 as being the core
of their complaint. Indeed, even when we got the letter of the
26th where it was raised for the first time in that list of questions,
I took the core of their complaint to be that John Humphreys paragraph
on the front page.

Q. So nobody said, as I understand your evidence,
to the Governors at that meeting: there is a problem about the
6.07 broadcast, which was unscripted, and where Mr Gilligan appears
to have gone further than he should have done?

A. No, because at that time the Government's
complaint was all-encompassing. They were not saying: we have
a problem, we have a complaint about the 6.07 broadcast. They
said: we have a complaint about the entirety of these allegations.
I think Mr Campbell's letter to the Director General on the 26th
said "the story is 100 per cent wrong". This was an
all or nothing complaint, not a complaint about a phrase in one
version of 19 broadcasts.

Q. It was a number of complaints, one of which
related specifically to the 6.07 broadcast.

A. I accept that the wording of the 6.07 was
raised for the first time in the letter of the 26th, yes.

Q. In fact you had at 6.07, whether you intended
to or not, attacked the good faith of the Government, had you
not?

A. On reflection I can see that. At the time,
I do not think that was sufficiently recognised, no.

Q. Did anyone point out to the Governors that
the dossier had said that it reflected the views of the JIC and
Mr Gilligan had broadcast, at 7.32, an allegation that the Government
had actually inserted things contrary to intelligence advice?
Was that point made to the Governors?

A. No. As I have explained to you before, we
saw the core allegations that were being made about the scripted
items rather than 6.07, and again, even in that allegation we
did not accept that the reservations of the Intelligence Services
necessarily referred to the heads of those services or the JIC;
and I believe we always thought of it in terms of people lower
down the chain who had been involved in the assessment and production
of the dossier, who were concerned, and at some level unspecified
in the BBC's broadcast, that stuff had been included against their
advice.

LORD HUTTON: May I just ask you on that point,
Mr Sambrook, if we look at BBC/1/4, which is the first page of
the transcript, if we can scroll down that, please. Yes, just
there. You see the paragraph there beginning: "Well, erm,
our source says that the dossier, as it was finally published,
made the Intelligence Services unhappy " Then if we
go over to the next page which is the commencement of the broadcast
at 7.32, about halfway down that passage: " Andrew
Gilligan has found evidence that the Government's dossier on Iraq
that was produced last September was cobbled together at the last
minute with some unconfirmed material that had not been approved
by the Security Services." Now, there is a reference to the
Intelligence Services being unhappy and then there is a reference
to "had not been approved by the Security Services".

A. Hmm.

LORD HUTTON: I think later there is a reference
at 006 to Mr Gilligan, where he said "most people in intelligence
were not happy"; but if one looks at the first two references,
that gives the picture, does it not, that it was the entirety
of the Intelligence Services, or would it not apply certainly
to the heads of the Intelligence Services?

A. I accept that reading can be taken from it.

LORD HUTTON: You say "can be taken from
it". Is that not the only reading if you just look at those
passages? Once they were heard by someone listening to the broadcast:
"the Intelligence Services".

A. I think all I can say, my Lord, is that in
the programme's mind, and indeed in ours for some time, that was
not what we believed to be the allegation that had been made.

LORD HUTTON: Is the important thing not what
the listeners take it to mean?

A. I agree with that, yes.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

MR SUMPTION: You have accepted that there was
no basis in Mr Gilligan's notes for the assertion that that point
had been made to him by Dr Kelly, the conscious misfeasance point.

A. It was not in his notes, yes.

Q. Was that point made to the Governors?

A. Yes, I said to the Governors that his notes
were not verbatim, were not - not every that he had broadcast
was contained in his notes but that Mr Gilligan asserted that
what was not there was a proper reflection of his conversation
with Dr Kelly. The one point the Governors challenged me on was
whether the name "Campbell" was represented in the notes
and I told them that it was, next to a phrase about transformation
of the dossier. And that was really the only point that they wanted
to have more clarification about the notes on.

Q. You see, Mr Sambrook, when you wrote the 27th
June letter you had not seen Mr Gilligan's notes; and when you
subsequently saw them you realised that there might be a problem
about the unequivocal way in which you had answered Mr Campbell's
question whether the BBC stood by the 6.07 allegation.

A. When I saw his notes I had the conversation
with Andrew about those elements of his broadcast which were not
captured in his notes and he continued to assert that his conversation
with Dr Kelly backed up those comments, and I took him at face
value.

Q. So he continued to tell you that that was
what Dr Kelly had actually told him?

A. He continued to say it was a proper - he did
not say it was a direct quote at that point but he did say it
continued to be a proper reflection and interpretation of what
Dr Kelly had told him, which is what I think I said in my evidence
on the 13th.

Mr Davies said:

[24 September, page 29, line 9]

Q. Well, were you aware, at the time of the meeting,
that Mr Sambrook had not examined Mr Gilligan's notes at the time
of writing his letter on 27th June?

A. I was aware of that. I also knew he had written
the letter in the presence of Mr Gilligan for a large part of
his writing.

Q. Were you aware he had examined them since
writing that letter?

A. I was aware he had examined them before the
Governor's meeting.

Q. Were you aware the notes did not support the
most serious of the allegations, namely Mr Gilligan's source had
accused the Government of putting material into the dossier knowing
it was probably wrong?

A. None of the Governors were aware that the
notes did not substantiate that, and nor did, I think - was Mr
Sambrook aware of that. He had looked at the notes and he had
not, I think, picked up - I believe he said this to the Inquiry
- that parts of the 6.07 broadcast were not repeated in the notes
formally. However, he had asked the journalist, Mr Gilligan, whether
or not he fully stood by the reports and the answer was, "Yes,
both factually and in terms of interpretation", and that
is what he told us.

Q. So Mr Sambrook had looked at the notes but
had not picked up the fact that the most serious of the allegations
was not reflected in the note; that is your evidence, as I understand
it, indeed it is Mr Sambrook's.

A. I think it was not repeated verbatim in the
notes. I think Mr Sambrook had not noted that it was not repeated
verbatim in the notes. I believe Mr Sambrook told the Inquiry
that.

Q. The notes were not, of course, put before
the Governors even in redacted form, were they?

A. No, they were not.

(3) The e-mail sent by Mr Kevin Marsh to Mr Stephen
Mitchell on 27 June 2003 set out in paragraph 284 was critical
of Mr Gilligan's method of reporting and was clearly relevant
to the complaints which the Government was making about his broadcast
on 29 May. Yet it appears that this e-mail of 27 June 2003 was
never brought to the attention of Mr Sambrook or to the attention
of the Governors. In his evidence Mr Dyke said:

[15 September, page 169, line 17]

Q. We have also seen an e-mail at BBC/5/118,
in which comments were made about Mr Gilligan's reporting.

A. Yes.

Q. Did you see this e-mail?

A. No, I did not know of the existence of this
e-mail until the day the Inquiry started. I should explain, I
was away - I took a truncated holiday and therefore I came back
and that was the first I knew of this e-mail.

LORD HUTTON: Do you think you should have been
made aware of it before the Governors' meeting?

A. I do not think - my understanding, but you
must confirm it with him, is that Richard Sambrook had not seen
this e-mail before the Governors' meeting.

LORD HUTTON: Do you think he should have seen
it?

A. There are a million e-mails a day inside the
BBC. Unless somebody had referred it to him, he would not have
seen it. But I certainly had not seen it; and I did not see it
until the Inquiry started.

LORD HUTTON: But it is very critical of the broadcast
about which the Government was making very serious complaints
and about which there was a very serious controversy.

A. Sorry, can I just (Pause). It says
this - yes, it makes - it expresses certain concerns: "This
story was a good piece of investigative journalism marred by flawed
reporting."

LORD HUTTON: "Our biggest millstone has
"

A. Yes, on reading this I could not say I was
not concerned.

LORD HUTTON: If I could ask you again Mr Dyke:
do you not think that somebody in the BBC chain of management
should have brought this to the attention of Mr Sambrook and/or
yourself before the Governors' meeting?

A. They would not have brought it to my attention.

LORD HUTTON: Very well, that -

A. This is further down the chain, quite a long
way down the chain.

LORD HUTTON: Yes.

A. But, well - whether they should have done,
they did not.

In his evidence Mr Sambrook said:

[17 September, page 132, line 6]

Q. We have certain observations from Mr Marsh
himself which are included in an e-mail on 27th June which you
will find at BBC/5/118. When did you first see this e-mail?

A. When it was disclosed for the Inquiry.

Q. I see. Now, as I understand it, partly from
documents and partly from Mr Dyke's evidence, Stephen Mitchell
is somebody who, from time to time, looks into matters which one
might loosely call regulatory for the senior executives; is that
wrong?

A. No, Stephen Mitchell is the head of Radio
News who reports to me. It is Stephen Whittle who is the controller
of editorial policy.

Q. You are right to correct me on that. If we
could look at what Mr Marsh says: "Some thoughts - clearly
I have to talk to Andrew Gilligan early next week. I hope that
by then my worst fears - based on what I'm hearing from the spooks
this afternoon - aren't realised. Assuming not, the guts of what
I would say are: "This story was a good piece of investigative
journalism, marred by flawed reporting - our biggest millstone
has been his loose use of language and lack of judgment in some
of his phraseology. "It was marred also " that
is a point about the Mail on Sunday and the Spectator. "That
is in many ways a result of the loose and in some ways distant
relationship he's been allowed to have with Today." Have
you discussed with Mr Marsh his views as reflected in this document?

A. I had discussed, before this document, in
broad terms his views of Andrew Gilligan as a reporter and indeed
with Stephen Mitchell as well, yes.

Q. Can you tell us why it is, what is the loose
language which Mr Marsh is drawing attention to as possibly fulfilling
his worst fears?

A. I am not sure that the loose language is related
to the worst fears. I think that is a separate point.

Q. Leaving the fears, let us concentrate on the
loose language.

A. As I said, this was not flagged up to me at
the time. I only knew about it after it was disclosed to this
Inquiry. My understanding of what Kevin was talking about is we
should have had a consistent phrase for capturing the allegations
that Dr Kelly was making, both for presenters and for reporters
and within the report scripts, and it would have been a lot better
if we had been entirely consistent on that.

Q. You had not seen this document, as I understand
your evidence, by the time you briefed the Governors' meeting
on 6th July?

A. That is correct.

Q. Do you think you should have done?

A. I think if Kevin Marsh or Stephen Mitchell
had had real concerns about the nature of the reporting or indeed
about the nature of the way we were dealing with the Government's
complaint, I would have expected them to bring those to my attention.
I am not clear that this e-mail necessarily represents serious
concerns.

LORD HUTTON: You think it does not represent
serious concerns?

A. My personal view about it is that it is much
more saying - it is entitled "from here"; my personal
view about it is that it is an e-mail from a programme editor
to his line manager saying that in future we would be better to
have a more disciplined use in terms of scripting materials and
not doing live two-ways and so on; and it is an attempt to look
forward at how things should be managed in the future. Again,
this was not flagged up to me at the time. All I can say is that,
I mean, I know both Kevin Marsh and Stephen Mitchell extremely
well and I believe if they had serious concerns about the quality
of the journalism or indeed our response to the Government, they
would have raised it directly with me and they did not.

MR SUMPTION: Is it not a source of concern if
grave allegations are made against public figures on the basis
of loose use of language and lack of judgment in the phraseology?
Is that not a source of concern?

A. If that is their view then it would be, yes.

Q. Well, it does seem to have been Mr Marsh's
view; and what exactly did the Governors, when they came to consider
this, know about the views of the editor of the programme itself,
ie Mr Marsh?

A. Well, they - I do not think the Governors
were particularly interested in the editor's view; they were interested
in my view; and I shared with them the view I had had for a considerable
period of time, and which was certainly partly informed by Mr
Marsh and by Mr Mitchell, which was that Andrew Gilligan was in
some respects a good reporter. There are two aspects to journalism.
There is the finding out of the information and there is then
how you present it. My view for some time would be that Andrew
Gilligan is extremely good at finding out information but there
are sometimes questions of nuance and subtlety in how he presents
it which are not all that they should be. Indeed, in my evidence
to the Inquiry on August 13th we talked a little bit about some
of the issues that arose during his reporting of the Iraq War
in that context, and I was frank with the Board of Governors about
that, my view of Andrew Gilligan in those terms. I think I described
him as a reporter who paints in primary colours rather than something
more subtle.

Q. If you had known that Mr Marsh's views were
as reflected in this e-mail at the time of the Governor's meeting,
would you have thought it right to draw their attention to the
fact?

A. I think it is hypothetical because I was not
- I did not see this e-mail.

Q. Yes, I know it is hypothetical but I would
still like your answer to the question.

A. No, I think the Governors would have wanted
to know what my view was.

Q. Right. They would not have been interested
in the views of Mr Marsh, as the editor of the programme that
was being complained about?

A. Well, only if they significantly differed
from mine.

Q. I see. Do you share the views expressed here?

A. I have already told you what my views of Andrew
Gilligan's reporting were.

In his evidence Mr Davies said:

[28 August, page 135, line 18]

Q. Can I take you to BBC/5/118, where it was
said : " I have to talk to AG [that is Mr Gilligan]
early next week. I hope that by then my worst fears aren't
realised. Assuming not, the guts of what I would say are: "This
story was a good piece of investigative journalism, marred by
flawed reporting - our biggest millstone has been his loose use
of language and lack of judgment in some of his phraseology."
Also the writing for other outlets and an explanation as to why
that might have happened. Did you think you ought to have known
of these comments at the Governors' meetings?

A. No, I did not honestly. These comments were
between the editor of Today and, I think, the Director of Radio
News. They are considerably below the Board of Governors level.
What we needed to know at Board of Governors was what the considered
judgment of the News Division and the Director General was of
Mr Gilligan as a reporter; and these comments do not reflect their
considered judgment - I think Mr Sambrook said that in evidence
to this Inquiry; and certainly they do not reflect what the Director
of News said about Mr Gilligan as a reporter to the Governors.

I am unable to accept these dismissive comments on
the relevance and importance of Mr Marsh's e-mail. I consider
the lack of knowledge on the part of Mr Sambrook and the Governors
of Mr Marsh's e-mail containing criticisms of Mr Gilligan's method
of reporting shows a defect in the BBC's management system for
the consideration of complaints in respect of broadcasts.

(4)(a) I consider
that the Governors found themselves in a difficult position at
their meeting on the evening of 6 July as they were being told
by the management of the BBC that they were satisfied as to the
credibility and reliability of the anonymous source and that Mr
Gilligan fully stood by his reports. The view taken by Mr Gavyn
Davies is shown in the following passage of his evidence when
cross-examined by Mr Sumption:

[24 September, page 30, line 20]

Q. Were you aware that since Mr Gilligan's original
broadcast, statements had been made both by Mr Gilligan and himself
[Mr Sambrook] that the source was in the Intelligence Services,
but that by 6th July Mr Sambrook knew that that was not so?

A. No, I was not aware that - this intelligence
source point, Mr Sumption, and the difference between intelligence
sources and Intelligence Service sources, had not come across
my radar screen in any detail by the time of the Governors' meeting.

Q. Do you not think it should have come across
somebody's radar screen if the Governors were going to be properly
informed about this?

A. It did come across somebody's radar screen.
Both the Director of News and I should imagine the Director General,
who broadly knew who the source was, would have thought about
it in some detail. I think what Mr Sambrook said to the Inquiry
was that when he described the source as an Intelligence Service
source on his Today Programme interview, he subsequently realised
that that was a mistake but that he did not feel that he could
correct that mistake without pointing further fingers at the source.
He did not mention any of that to the Governors.

Q. He did not, did he? So the Governors did not
know that a part of what had been said about the status of the
source on the BBC was known to the Director of News to be wrong;
and they had no report on the extent to which Mr Gilligan's notes
supported what he had broadcast. Those two points are factually
correct, are they not?

A. The Governors did not know anything about
the source other than the credibility and reliability of the source
as attested by several editors.

Q. In other words, the answer to my question
is: no, they did not know either of those two facts and nobody
told them.

A. In terms of the notes that Mr Gilligan gave
- kept of his meeting with Dr Kelly, the Governors were told that
those notes substantiated the broadcast and, more to the point,
that Mr Gilligan was standing fully behind his broadcast. Now,
I do want to say a word about notes here, because these notes
have adopted an extraordinarily large part of the discussions
that have been had since. Most journalists broadcast material
based, to a large extent, on memory as well as notes; and most
journalists do not make verbatim or anywhere near verbatim notes
of their discussions. One of the reasons that is the case - and
I can tell you this because I have worked, in my career, for a
lengthy period of time as a part time journalist - is most journalists
think that it puts off the person they are talking to if they
either bring out a tape recorder or a notepad. Therefore it is
very customary, Mr Sumption, for the journalist's memory to be
every bit as important as the journalist's notes.

Q. We know that Mr Gilligan claims that he did,
in fact, take notes during his meeting with Dr Kelly. So whatever
the general position may be, that does not seem to be a relevant
consideration in this case.

A. It does because he has always made it clear
that this was not a verbatim set of notes.

Q. Let me take you up on what you said a moment
ago, that the Governors were told that Mr Gilligan's notes supported
the broadcast. As I understand what you said slightly earlier
than that, they were told that even though Mr Sambrook had not
examined the notes carefully enough to pick up the point that
the 6.07 allegations were not reflected there.

A. As Mr Sambrook correctly told you, at the
time the main interest in what the notes said appeared to be in
two things: one was whether the notes substantiated The Mail on
Sunday's article allegation by the source, that the source had
used the word "Campbell" or had attributed to Alastair
Campbell the transformation of the document. That was one thing.
The second was whether the notes substantiated the "sexing
up" or "making the document sexier" phrase. And
those were the two things that I think Mr Sambrook said were particularly
on his mind when he inspected the notes; and the notes did substantiate
both those two things.

Q. Was nobody interested in the question whether
the notes substantiated the suggestion broadcast by Mr Gilligan
that the Government had put material into the dossier knowing
that it was probably wrong? Was no one interested in that question?

A. The focus on the 6.07 broadcast, which has
become very intense recently in the Government's case, was not
actually reflected with the current degree of intensity at the
time. Mr Sambrook has said to this Inquiry that it had not acquired
the profile, in his thinking, that it has since acquired in the
Government's case. I would argue, sir, that it had not acquired
this profile in the Government's complaints prior to about the
latter part of June either.

Q. I do not accept that, Mr Davies, but I am
not going to go through that point with you. That too is a matter
of record. But the fact is if Mr Sambrook had carefully gone through
the notes and compared them with the transcript of what Mr Gilligan
had said, it would have been absolutely apparent to him what all
BBC witnesses have acknowledged so far in this Inquiry, namely
that Mr Gilligan had gone too far, would it not?

A. He would have noted that the precise words
used in the 6.07 broadcast were not duplicated in the notes, and
I think he would then have asked Mr Gilligan why; and, in a sense,
I would say that actually was - what Mr Gilligan said was that
the 6.07 was an interpretation and not a direct quote from the
source, he should not have suggested it was a direct quote. It
was an interpretation from the source. And he was at that stage
standing by it. One of the things I would say about the possibility
of a complaints process, and one reason why I think that a full
complaints process may have perhaps had problems sorting this
particular issue out, is that I think the same thing may have
happened. I think they may have looked at the notes, seen that
they did not duplicate the words in the 6.07, asked Mr Gilligan
why not and Mr Gilligan may well have said: that was a valid interpretation
of what the source said to me. That is why I think some further
concrete evidence may have been needed to sort this out.

Q. Are you saying that whatever Mr Gilligan said
about things that were not in his notes would have been taken
at face value by the Governors without further investigation?

A. I did not say anything about the Governors,
I was talking about by the PCU.

Q. By the PCU then.

A. I do not think anything would have been taken
at face value at all. It would have been taken as evidence, certainly.

..........

[24 September, page 36, line 22]

Q. How were the Governors going to form an independent
view of the question whether Mr Gilligan had gone further than
his source and the question whether the source had been accurately
described without having the information before them that was,
in fact, in Mr Sambrook's head as this meeting took place?

A. I have already explained to you, I think that
the focus on the notes is exaggerated to some degree. And what
I think the Governors wanted - I speak for myself, Mr Sumption;
what I wanted, as Chairman, was I wanted the considered judgment
of the executives that we had appointed to run the news division
and the Director General on whether the source was credible and
reliable and whether the source was accurately reported. And short
of seeking to duplicate their process in a way that would have
suggested that we did not trust them, I am not sure what we could
have done. Let me explain something to you: the Board of the BBC
cannot operate, cannot operate, unless it is in a situation in
which it can rely on the good faith and competence of its officers.
I am absolutely certain that it can. If it sought to duplicate
all of the actions of management it would indeed become the management.
There is a gap between what the Board is and does and what the
management is and does.

Q. Mr Davies, I quite understand that the Governors'
board is a supervisory and, in some respects, an investigatory
body. But surely the problem here was that the Governors did in
fact duplicate what the executives had done instead of forming
a view of their own which, if they had been properly informed,
might have been very different?

A. No, they did not duplicate what the executive
had done. They expressed the judgment, which I do not resile from
at all, that it was in the public interest to put the words of
the source into the public domain.

Q. They were put in a position where, for sheer
want of information on the point, they had no alternative but
to accept the views of the executives although those executives
had dug themselves firmly into a position, is that not right?

A. The Governors had a great deal of information
going into the meeting and they had an important corroboration
for the Gilligan report, which continues to slip out of the mind
of the Government; and that is the Susan Watts reports. I said
in my first appearance before this Inquiry that the Susan Watts
report was not identical to the Gilligan report. I actually studied
both before I went into the meeting and I knew they were not identical,
but I equally knew that the burden of what Mr Gilligan had reported
in his many broadcasts on the subject at the end of May was a
close match to the burden of what Ms Watts reported on 2nd and
4th June. And I do not think it should be forgotten that that
is the case, because certainly in my mind, and in several other
Governors' mind, maybe the whole of the Board of Governors who
received the information before they went into the meeting, that
was seen as an important corroboration of the Gilligan story.

Q. Would you turn to BBC/6/107, please? This
is part of the official minute of the meeting in question. After
the executives are drawn it says, second paragraph from the top
of the page: "Following an account from Mark Damazer about
how the '45 minutes claim' had been disputed by the Government
since the broadcast, and a discussion by Governors about the accuracy
of the report, Gavyn Davies reminded the Board that it was not
a matter for them." So is the position that when the Governors
did start discussing the accuracy of the report you intervened
to stop them?

A. I think that is a very tendentious way of
putting it. I was reminding them, as I had said to them in the
e-mail on the Friday and had basically been agreed with by all
Governors, that the intrinsic accuracy of the report, ie whether
the source was telling, fundamentally, the truth or not, as opposed
to whether we were accurately reporting him, was something that
we were not in a position to determine. I therefore felt at this
stage, and other Governors agreed with me, that the discussion
was interesting but going down a by-way which we could not reach
a conclusion on.

Q. I see. You could not, of course, without the
information.

A. No, we could not have got the information,
Mr Sumption. There was no way of obtaining the information.

(4)(b) The Governors were right to take the view
that it was their duty to protect the independence of the BBC
against attacks by the Government and there is no doubt that Mr
Campbell's complaints were being expressed in exceptionally strong
terms which raised very considerably the temperature of the dispute
between the Government and the BBC, but Mr Campbell's allegation
that the BBC had an anti-war agenda in his evidence to the FAC
was only one part of his evidence. The Government's concern about
Mr Gilligan's broadcast on the 29 May was a separate issue about
which specific complaints had been made by the Government. Therefore
I consider that the Governors should have recognised more fully
than they did that their duty to protect the independence of the
BBC was not incompatible with giving proper consideration to whether
there was validity in the Government's complaints, no matter how
strongly worded by Mr Campbell, that the allegations against its
integrity reported in Mr Gilligan's broadcasts were unfounded
and the Governors failed to give this issue proper consideration.
The view taken by the Governors, as explained by Mr Gavyn Davies
in his evidence, that they had to rely on the BBC management to
investigate and assess whether Mr Gilligan's source was reliable
and credible and that it was not for them as Governors to investigate
whether the allegations reported were themselves accurate, is
a view which is understandable. However I consider that this was
not the correct view for the Governors to take because the Government
had stated to the BBC in clear terms, as had Mr Campbell to the
FAC, that the report that the Government probably knew that the
45 minutes claim was wrong was untruthful, and this denial was
made with the authority of the Prime Minister and the Chairman
of the JIC. In those circumstances, rather than relying on the
assurances of BBC management, I consider that the Governors themselves
should have made more detailed investigations into the extent
to which Mr Gilligan's notes supported his report. If they had
done this they would probably have discovered that the notes did
not support the allegation that the Government knew that the 45
minutes claim was probably wrong, and the Governors should then
have questioned whether it was right for the BBC to maintain that
it was in the public interest to broadcast that allegation in
Mr Gilligan's report from an anonymous source and to rely on Mr
Gilligan's assurance that his report was accurate. Therefore in
the very unusual and specific circumstances relating to Mr Gilligan's
broadcasts, I consider that the Governors are to be criticised
for themselves failing to make more detailed investigations into
whether this allegation reported by Mr Gilligan was properly supported
by his notes and for failing to give proper and adequate consideration
to whether the BBC should publicly acknowledge that this very
grave allegation should not have been broadcast.

Summary of conclusions relating
to the BBC arising from Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on the BBC Today
programme on 29 May 2003

291. (1)The allegations reported
by Mr Gilligan on the BBC Today programme on 29 May 2003 that
the Government probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong
or questionable before the dossier was published and that it was
not inserted in the first draft of the dossier because it only
came from one source and the intelligence agencies did not really
believe it was necessarily true, were unfounded.

(2) The communication by the media of information
(including information obtained by investigative reporters) on
matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life
in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such
information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists
for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations
of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians,
should not be made by the media. Where a reporter is intending
to broadcast or publish information impugning the integrity of
others the management of his broadcasting company or newspaper
should ensure that a system is in place whereby his editor or
editors give careful consideration to the wording of the report
and to whether it is right in all the circumstances to broadcast
or publish it. The allegations that Mr Gilligan was intending
to broadcast in respect of the Government and the preparation
of the dossier were very grave allegations in relation to a subject
of great importance and I consider that the editorial system which
the BBC permitted was defective in that Mr Gilligan was allowed
to broadcast his report at 6.07am without editors having seen
a script of what he was going to say and having considered whether
it should be approved.

(3) The BBC management was at fault in the following
respects in failing to investigate properly the Government's complaints
that the report in the 6.07am broadcast was false that the Government
probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong even before
it decided to put it in the dossier. The BBC management failed,
before Mr Sambrook wrote his letter of 27 June 2003 to Mr Campbell,
to make an examination of Mr Gilligan's notes on his personal
organiser of his meeting with Dr Kelly to see if they supported
the allegations which he had reported in his broadcast at 6.07am.
When the BBC management did look at Mr Gilligan's notes after
27 June it failed to appreciate that the notes did not fully support
the most serious of the allegations which he had reported in the
6.07am broadcast, and it therefore failed to draw the attention
of the Governors to the lack of support in the notes for the most
serious of the allegations.

(4) The e-mail sent by Mr Kevin Marsh, the editor
of the Today programme on 27 June 2003 to Mr Stephen Mitchell,
the Head of Radio News, (see paragraph 284) which was critical
of Mr Gilligan's method of reporting, and which referred to Mr
Gilligan's "loose use of language and lack of judgment in
some of his phraseology" and referred also to "the loose
and in some ways distant relationship he's been allowed to have
with Today," was clearly relevant to the complaints which
the Government were making about his broadcasts on 29 May, and
the lack of knowledge on the part of Mr Sambrook, the Director
of News and the Governors of this critical e-mail shows a defect
in the operation of the BBC's management system for the consideration
of complaints in respect of broadcasts.

(5) The Governors were right to take the view that
it was their duty to protect the independence of the BBC against
attacks by the Government and Mr Campbell's complaints were being
expressed in exceptionally strong terms which raised very considerably
the temperature of the dispute between the Government and the
BBC. However Mr Campbell's allegation that the BBC had an anti-war
agenda in his evidence to the FAC was only one part of his evidence.
The Government's concern about Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on 29
May was a separate issue about which specific complaints had been
made by the Government. Therefore the Governors should have recognised
more fully than they did that their duty to protect the independence
of the BBC was not incompatible with giving proper consideration
to whether there was validity in the Government's complaints,
no matter how strongly worded by Mr Campbell, that the allegations
against its integrity reported in Mr Gilligan's broadcasts were
unfounded and the Governors failed to give this issue proper consideration.
The view taken by the Governors, as explained in evidence by Mr
Gavyn Davies, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, that they
had to rely on the BBC management to investigate and assess whether
Mr Gilligan's source was reliable and credible and that it was
not for them as Governors to investigate whether the allegations
reported were themselves accurate, is a view which is understandable.
However this was not the correct view for the Governors to take
because the Government had stated to the BBC in clear terms, as
had Mr Campbell to the FAC, that the report that the Government
probably knew that the 45 minutes claim was wrong was untruthful,
and this denial was made with the authority of the Prime Minister
and the Chairman of the JIC. In those circumstances, rather than
relying on the assurances of BBC management, I consider that the
Governors themselves should have made more detailed investigations
into the extent to which Mr Gilligan's notes supported his report.
If they had done this they would probably have discovered that
the notes did not support the allegation that the Government knew
that the 45 minutes claim was probably wrong, and the Governors
should then have questioned whether it was right for the BBC to
maintain that it was in the public interest to broadcast that
allegation in Mr Gilligan's report and to rely on Mr Gilligan's
assurances that his report was accurate. Therefore in the very
unusual and specific circumstances relating to Mr Gilligan's broadcasts,
the Governors are to be criticised for themselves failing to make
more detailed investigations into whether this allegation reported
by Mr Gilligan was properly supported by his notes and for failing
to give proper and adequate consideration to whether the BBC should
publicly acknowledge that this very grave allegation should not
have been broadcast.